5 Crucial Ways To Avoid a Cardiac Event for Firefighters- Part 4

In this series, I’m explaining the 5 most important things firefighters must do to avoid suffering a fatal cardiac event; because heart attack is still the leading cause of death in the fire service and these events are completely preventable. To start from the beginning click here.

Eat More Fruits And Vegetables

One crucial thing you can do to lower your risk of having a heart attack is to eat more fruits and veggies. You may be thinking that’s a no-brainer but I think knowing the exact ways that they combat heart disease helps motivate us to fit more fruits and vegetables into our diet.

As I discussed in the last article, high cholesterol is one of the heart disease risk factors and having one or more of the risk factors significantly increases your risk of dying on duty. The reason that high cholesterol leads to heart disease is because over time the cholesterol floating around in our arteries forms a hard plaque through a process called oxidation.

Fruits and vegetables have something called antioxidants in them. That means they mitigate the oxidation process and help prevent plaque formation. Hence, they attack heart disease at the source.

Another thing that antioxidants do is reduce inflammation in the body. Systemic inflammation is believed to majorly contribute to the progression of heart disease. Since firefighters are constantly contending with other issues that cause inflammation (namely stress and sleep deprivation), you should do everything you can to combat it.

Another heart disease risk factor to watch out for is high blood pressure. Firefighters who are hypertensive increase their risk of dying from a duty-related heart attack 12 times. Potassium is a nutrient that works directly to lower blood pressure. And potassium, you guessed it, is high in fruits and vegetables.

Since fruits and vegetables are low in calories, eating more of them is certainly a good way to lose weight. The second article of this series describes all the heart healthy benefits of losing weight: lower blood pressure and cholesterol, less systemic inflammation and better blood glucose.

Fruits and vegetables are also high in fiber. Fiber is a wonder-nutrient that lowers your cholesterol, helps you feel full (contributing to weight loss), and controls your blood sugar so you don’t develop diabetes.

Don’t take that last one lightly. Although diabetes is a very manageable disease, the typical lifespan of a person with type II diabetes is much shorter than average and death is usually from heart disease. Furthermore, firefighters who have diabetes are 10 times more likely to experience a fatal cardiac event on duty.

Do you believe yet? Try to eat at least one serving of fruits or vegetables with each meal, shoot for two at dinner. Either a whole piece or one cup chopped is a serving.

Read Part 5  (When Released)