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Drink to Heart Health - Wine, Coffee and Tea Help Prevent Heart Disease


Eating the right foods is a big part of a heart healthy lifestyle. But what you drink each day can also affect your heart. As you work to add fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fish to your diet routine, take time to consider how much wine, coffee and tea you drink. Many people are solely focused on lowering cholesterol, but need to expand their cardiovascular health planning a bit further.

Red Wine

Many would like to believe that drinking red wine leads to a healthy heart. Whether this is true most likely depends on your age (middle-aged and older people seem to benefit more than young adults,) your style of drinking (binge drinking is not helpful) and the amount you drink on average each day (heavy drinking is linked to many health problems including heart attack and stroke.)

The attractive link between red wine and a healthy heart is partly due to the French Paradox, where the French were found to have low rates of heart disease while enjoying a diet that included higher fat foods but also frequent red wine consumption. While the reality of the French Paradox has been disputed, research performed since the early 1990’s does show that drinking red wine, in moderation, benefits the heart.

The bigger question, however, is whether red wine is any better than other alcoholic beverages when it comes to reducing heart disease risk. There are compounds in red wine that can protect against oxidative damage, help blood flow and improve endothelial function. But alcohol itself has some of these properties and population studies show that drinking any type of alcohol, in the right amount, can benefit the heart.

Just what is the right amount? Moderation, as in all things, is key. When large populations are studied, the group drinking a very moderate amount of alcohol, less than one drink per day, has the least heart disease. But there is also a lower rate of heart disease in men who drink less than four drinks per day and women who drink less than two drinks per day. The American Heart Association defines moderate alcohol consumption as one to two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women.

Coffee

Coffee is often viewed as a crutch in our diet, something we are hooked on or a tough habit to break. But from a nutritional perspective, coffee is an interesting beverage. Many of the same phytochemicals that you get from eating fruits and vegetables are also found in the coffee bean. Depending on how you prepare your coffee, you’ll get an interesting array of compounds in your daily cup.

Whether coffee is good or bad for heart is less clear. Most recent studies show that drinking coffee has little effect or a slight beneficial effect on heart health. But when it comes to type II diabetes, a condition that greatly increases your risk of heart disease, there is a connection to coffee. People who drink lots of coffee, more than four cups per day, had significantly lower rates of type II diabetes. I work at professional cv writing service and I drink 1-2 coffee cups in a day and it helps me be in a good mood.

Green Tea

Green tea comes from the same plant as black tea (including oolong tea). The difference is that green tea has not been oxidized during processing. But both types of tea contain an array of polyphenol compounds and other phytochemicals linked to improved endothelial function and protection against atherosclerosis disease.

In large observational studies, drinking green or black tea is linked to many health benefits including lower rates of heart disease. Drinking green tea has also been linked to fewer strokes. How much is a healthy dose? The benefits are seen in groups drinking about three or more cups per day.