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How to Find a Heart Attack Long Before It Happens

  • December 13, 2016

When you arrive at an emergency room with a suspected heart attack, one of the first things emergency personnel do is take a blood sample, to see if a tell-tale protein biomarker is present, which can confirm you’re having a heart attack. It’s an invaluable tool for health care workers. But now, a new technology may be able to detect that protein before you have the attack, Fortune reports.

The new test is still in the testing stages, but there are plenty of things you can do, now, to avoid a heart attack. To help with that, here are five healthy habits that were found to prevent nearly 80 percent of first-time heart attacks. They include: a healthy diet; being physically active; having a healthy waist circumference; moderate alcohol consumption; and no smoking.

When it comes to diet, I can’t stress enough that this means getting rid of refined carbs, grains, sugar and processed foods. It does NOT mean ditching healthy saturated fats found in foods such as butter, lard and eggs. Instead, eliminate harmful vegetable oils and trans fats and replace them with healthy fats, such as olive oil, butter, avocado, organic pastured eggs and coconut oil.

Make sure you are getting plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil, too. It also means consuming a good portion of your food raw, as well as including fermented foods in your daily diet. Add in regular exercise, good quality sleep and stress-management, and you have a good start toward a healthy heart.