Thursday, March 14, 2013

Dietary Changes For Stroke Prevention

Yesterday I posted a bit about ways to protect your brain for health preparedness. I wrote mostly about online programs that give your brain a workout to keep it fit.

The majority of other things that I do to take care of my brain are dietary. I have extremely high cholesterol in spite of being a vegetarian. I believe that I would be dead now if I hadn't become a vegetarian many years ago. My body makes a lot of cholesterol, so I certainly don't need to eat things that have a lot of it in them as well.

Cholesterol is a major culprit for causing strokes. I do a lot of dietary things to help with this problem.

I have mentioned some of the virtues of oats in your diet before. Oats are very helpful to lower your cholesterol. I read that when you eat oats, they attach to cholesterol in you and escort it out. According to something else I read, extra virgin olive oil does the same sort of thing. Regular olive oil does not work this way, so you have to make sure it is extra virgin olive oil.

Olive oil can actually become bad for you once it is heated to high temperatures. This means it is not a good idea to fry things in olive oil. Oils that work better at high temperatures like sunflower oil or coconut oil are better for frying or saute cooking. I have also almost given up frying things. I lightly saute them in a small amount of high temperature safe oil, instead.

If you are going to eat any flesh, it should be fish. Salmon is one of the safest fish to eat as far as heavy metal contamination goes. Fish oil can actually help bring down your cholesterol and does lots of other good things for your body. Some vegetarians make and exception and take fish oil capsules.

I won't do that, but you can get some of the same effects if you eat nuts, walnuts are the best, apparently. Flax seed and flax seed oil are also good that way.

If you don't want to or can't grind your own flax seed and don't feel up to chewing them whole, you can get ground ones at health food stores. 

I put flax seeds into some of my blender recipes. I guess I will give you my sober pina colada recipe in a few days. That would work well with a dose of diatomaceous earth, also. Again, diatomaceous earth will righteously constipate you unless you take serious preventive measures. Since I am veggie, my diet is especially high in fiber, so I don't have much worry in that department.

I have added a grated apple to my breakfast cereal every morning lately. White flesh fruits like apples and pears do something that prevents strokes. They do not know exactly how it works yet, but it sounded good enough for me to try it. I am a great guinea pig in that department since I have been having a lot of TIAs. 

Once I started the apple-in-the-cereal addition to my diet, the TIAs dropped off. I highly recommend the apple/pear adjustment to your diet if you are a stroke risk. This is not medical, advice, however. Humor your MD. My doctor is patient and long suffering and puts up with me very well. You are fortunate indeed if you find one like her.

In case you are not up on stroke terminology, TIAs are little mini strokes. They only last a short time and are not supposed to cause lasting damage. They can do cumulative damage, however. 

Enough stroke stuff for now. I have found more stuff for strokes, that I do as well as what I have already mentioned. I will write about it later. I will probably post about the pina colada milkshake tomorrow. It is really good and easy to make. 

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