Ayurveda For The Heart: How to Prevent and Cure Heart Diseases With Ayurveda

At present, heart problems are the leading cause of death worldwide. So, the basic foundation of keeping your overall health at its best is to keep your heart as a top priority.

Ayurveda, which is one of the oldest medicinal systems in the world, suggests improving your daily habits and food choices to reduce your risk of heart problems. There are remedies like Krishna’s Cardiac Care Juice to support your heart naturally, and many other ways that we will discuss in this blog.

Read on to learn how to prevent and cure heart disease with Ayurveda.

How Ayurveda Helps You Protect Your Heart

The diseases that affect your heart and circulation are referred to as heart diseases. Some common ones are:

• Coronary heart disease
• Heart failure
• Stroke
• Arrhythmia

Like many people, you might think heart problems happen all of a sudden. And yes, in some cases, they do. Like few medical problems can alter your life as suddenly as a heart attack. But in reality, the prime reason for the development of heart disease is a combination of an unhealthy lifestyle, low physical activity, and high consumption of unhealthy processed foods, which builds up gradually over time.

The non-modifiable risk factors for heart disease, such as family history, sex at birth, or age, are not in your control, but Ayurveda suggests plenty of other steps that can help you take control of the modifiable risk factors.

1. Eat Heart-Healthy Foods

In Ayurveda, everything starts with digestion, your Agni. If your digestion is off, it slowly affects overall health, including your heart. When food doesn’t digest properly, it leads to Ama (toxic buildup). This ama keeps circulating in your body and eventually starts accumulating in your system and blocking the channels of your body, like your blood vessels.

That’s one way a poor diet leads to heart problems. The second way is more obvious: weight gain.

Eating heavy, oily, processed food all the time causes fat to accumulate, especially around your belly. And excess belly fat is one of the biggest risk factors for heart disease. It affects your metabolism, raises blood pressure, and increases cholesterol, all of which increase your chances of heart problems.

So while you think just a pizza or a packet of chips won’t harm you in the moment, your body keeps score. Over time, it all adds up.

Ayurveda says, eat food that’s easy to digest, clean, and fresh. Not too spicy, not too oily, and definitely not stale or processed.

Here’s what helps:

• Light dals like moong and masoor
• Cooked veggies like lauki, spinach, carrots, beetroot
• Millets like bajra, jowar, or brown rice
• A spoonful of ghee in your meals (it actually helps strengthen digestion)
• Spices like haldi, adrak, lasun, jeera (they keep your channels clear and support circulation)

In Ayurveda, eating is seen as a sacred act, so practitioners often advise to eat mindfully, eating slowly and only until you feel comfortably full.

Also Read: 17 Incredibly Heart-Healthy Foods

2. Include Heart-Healthy Herbs in Your Routine

Modern medicine is great when a disease has already developed. But Ayurveda offers a holistic solution for almost every health issue, and it starts with prevention.

Our mother nature offers herbs that are great for keeping your heart healthy, plus they do not cause any side effects. Ayurveda suggests including the following herbs in your routine, especially if you have risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or a family history of heart disease.

Arjuna: This is a widely popular herb that has medicinal properties which help improve heart function and control heart disease, such as Angina (heart-related chest pain). Its constituents, like tannins and glycosides, have antioxidant and cardiotonic properties. They help strengthen your heart muscles, protect your heart and blood vessels from damage caused by free radicals, support the dilation of blood vessels, and help dissolve plaque, improving blood flow. Thus, it is effective in preventing as well as treating heart-related issues such as high blood pressure, palpitations, and rapid heartbeat.

Ashwagandha: This is an adaptogen, which means it helps in reducing stress by balancing cortisol levels in your body. Over time, chronic stress levels are related to serious health problems, including heart disease. The herb reduces stress and its symptoms, like high blood pressure and heart rate.

Garlic: This herb or spice, which is used in many Indian households, is supposedly capable of providing protection against heart disease.  It has good amounts of nutrients like manganese, vitamin C, and vitamin B6. The compound allicin that is produced when garlic is crushed or chopped has anti-inflammatory properties, which help lower cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar.

If you are seeking a herbal remedy that combines the goodness of all the heart-healthy herbs, then Krishna’s Cardiac Care Juice is an excellent option. Other ayurvedic drinks that help in preventing health diseases are:

• Krishna’s Cholesterol Juice
• Krishna’s BP Care Juice

3. Exercise Regularly

Ayurvedic practitioners say that just like food, how you move also shapes your health. A lazy, sluggish body means slow circulation, weak digestion, and, over time, more pressure on your heart. Your heart is a muscle, and just like any muscle, it needs regular movement to stay strong.

Staying active and exercising helps control your weight. It also reduces your chances of developing health problems like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes, which could put a strain on your heart.

Ayurveda recommends that every person should:

• Walk at least half to one hour a day, as your routine allows
• Practice asanas like Anulom Vilom and Bhramari Pranayama
• Do heart-friendly yoga like Setu Bandhasana (Bridge Pose), Bhujangasana (Cobra Pose), and Viparita Karani (Legs-up-the-wall)

4. Don’t Smoke

There’s no gentle way to say this: if you smoke, you’re directly harming your heart. You probably already know this: every cigarette packet has it written in bold.

This is one of the biggest risk factors of heart disease, but it is a preventable cause of the condition.

Smoking damages the lining of your blood vessels. It causes plaque buildup, aka fatty substance, in your arteries. It also increases blood pressure, reduces oxygen in your blood, thickens it, and increases your heart’s workload. Over time, all these factors lead to heart attacks, strokes, and a bunch of issues that could’ve been avoided.

From an Ayurvedic perspective, smoking completely disturbs all three doshas, especially Vata and Pitta. It dries out your system, overheats your blood, and disturbs your Agni.

So, be it cigarettes, hookah, or even passive smoking, the harm is unavoidable.

But the good part is that by quitting smoking, your risk of heart disease starts to drop as little as a day. And if you manage to stay completely away from cigarettes for a year, your chances of developing heart disease go down by almost 50% to about half that of a smoker. It doesn’t matter how long or how much you’ve smoked; the moment you stop, you start reaping rewards.

Takeaway

It is never too early to start prioritizing your health and well-being. Understand and take precautions against the risk factors. Work to correct them and maintain good health habits throughout life to prevent cardiac problems. Stay Happy, and Stay Healthy!