The BEST Foods to Strengthen Your Heart

Dr. Berg here. Today, we're going to talk about the top superfoods for your heart. One really simple way to figure this out is just to look at what mainstream medicine is telling you to do for the heart and go in the exact opposite direction, and you're going to be super successful because they'll tell you to make sure you lower your saturated fat or your cholesterol or your sodium content and have more fiber. No, no, no, no. No, you don't want to do that. That's not going to help you. Now, when we talk about superfoods, and yes, I'm guilty, I used to recommend a lot of these and I have videos on it, but goji berries, chia seed, flaxseed, kale shakes, spinach shakes, almonds, more green shakes with different greens, spirulina, walnuts, blueberries, all are perceived to be superfoods. But if you consume these foods, you're going to feel bloated. You're not going to actually have a lot of energy. It is absolutely true that they have a lot of antioxidants, but they don't have a lot of the other key nutrients that we need that are essential. And the big one I'm talking about is protein, amino acids. Unless you get enough protein, you're not going to feel really good. I mean, just do an experiment. Go ahead and start living on these foods and see how you feel. You're going to feel very, very weak and very, very tired. So these are not the superfoods that we're going to recommend. Instead, we need to eat foods that are nutrient-dense, that have the active form of vitamin A. Hemeyer B12, DHA, and EPA reduce inflammation. These are called omega-3. Walnuts and flaxseed have the precursor to DHA, and EPA is a fat called ALA, and the conversion is not too great. And none of these right here have high-quality, complete protein, and they don't have high levels of zinc. So now let's get into what foods you should be consuming that are considered a superfood for the heart. Number one, red meat. The exact food that they tell you to avoid for a heart problem. You're going to feel so good when you start to increase more high-quality red meat. I'm talking about grass-fed meat. You can get red meat from lamb as well and other animals. The big thing that red meat has is the super high-quality amino acids. That really supports the mitochondria in the heart muscle itself. Red meat is very high in carnitine, and carnitine supports the mitochondria, which is the powerhouse that gives the heart a lot of energy. Also coenzyme Q10, which is a real key essential nutrient for that mitochondria. And by the way, statins, which is a very popular drug, deplete this key nutrient that's very vital for the heart. So if you are on a statin, you definitely need to take this right here, or you'll end up with muscle problems. Because muscle, especially the heart muscle, needs mitochondria, and it needs this. It's called the cofactor. Now, one of the saturated fats in red meat is called stearic acid. It actually helps fuse together fragments of mitochondria to make them whole again, making the mitochondria more efficient. And so if you notice, the common thread with red meat is you really support the mitochondria. So stearic acid can help you with the mitochondria, but also it's actually very important in helping you burn more fat. Red meat also contains this other compound called carnitine, which is a very important antioxidant for certain problems with the heart. Red meat is loaded with zinc, which is also involved in over 200 different biochemical reactions. And then we have B12. B12 helps to lower something called homocysteine, which if that compound is too high in the heart, it can create problems in the heart. So B12 helps that, keep it in check. Let's roll right into number two, butter. Now, I know what you're going to say, like, wow, I thought butter was bad for the heart. No, it's not. Grass-fed butter is very healthy for the heart. It's loaded with vitamin K2. It keeps the calcium out of the arteries. And it also has butyrate. Butyrate reduces gut inflammation, CLA. This is a compound that helps improve insulin resistance. When people have insulin resistance, they have a lot of problems with the heart. Butter also has the active form of vitamin A, not the precursors, which also helps heal and reduce inflammation on the internal part of the body, including that inner layer of the artery called the endothelial layer. And of course, butter has stearic acid. Number three, egg yolk, not just the egg white. We've been told for many years that egg yolks are very bad because they're loaded with the cholesterol and that's going to plug up your arteries. Well, it just so happens that that was absolutely not true. Egg yolks are super healthy and they have something very unique in them. They have a lot of choline. Choline helps prevent a fatty liver. If your liver becomes fatty, it could spill over into the heart. There's a condition called epicardial fat, which is fat around the heart, which is probably one of the biggest biomarkers of heart longevity and heart health. Because when you have fat around the heart, that's not good. And unfortunately, we were told that saturated fats are bad, but unsaturated fats are good, like the seed oils. So people have been consuming a lot of them for many, many years. And those seed oils can embed into the cell membranes and really mess them up. And it takes about 600 days to get them out once you stop consuming seed oils. But with egg yolks, the choline in there can help support those membranes, which is very, very important with insulin receptors and other things crossing the membrane. And the other thing that egg has that's very important is cholesterol. That's right. Cholesterol is the building block to make bile salts. Your gallbladder is the main route for excess cholesterol. So if your liver has too much cholesterol, you need this bile to get rid of the excess cholesterol. But bile is made from cholesterol. Also vitamin D from the sun interacts with cholesterol just underneath your skin to make vitamin D. So we need cholesterol for bile, vitamin D, and you need cholesterol to make certain hormones. Also egg yolks are loaded with vitamin K2 to keep the calcium out of the arteries. Egg yolks also have certain type of carotenoids like lutein and zeaxanthin, which they're also good for the internal part of the arteries. Let's talk about number four, cheese. I'm not talking about American cheese. I'm talking about the good stuff you usually get from Europe, the raw, unaged cheese. Jarlsberg cheese has the most K2 of any cheeses. And a lot of the other hard cheeses also are loaded with vitamin K2. This is the key vitamin that actually not only keeps the arteries free of calcium, but also it's a nutrient for the mitochondria. There are certain, they're called peptides, which are small little chains of amino acids in cheese that are natural ACE inhibitors to help with blood pressure. Number five, shellfish. Now wait a second. I heard that shellfish was very high in mercury. Well it does have mercury in it, but it also is loaded with selenium, and selenium helps bind that mercury so it becomes neutralized, so you don't have to worry about the mercury in the shellfish. What shellfish does provide, and I'm talking about oysters, mussels, and clams, is a really good amount of omega-3 fatty acids, the active form of DHA and EPA. That's really important. But the other thing is the trace minerals are off the charts, and unfortunately our foods are depleted of trace minerals because their soils are depleted of trace minerals, and so the production of protein, like your hair, nails, skin, the ability to detoxify your body, the ability to make energy all depend on these co-factors, and trace minerals are a really big part of it. Number six, organ meats, and of course the liver that I'm recommending is the grass-fed, grass-finished liver, but our ancestors consumed a lot of organ meats, and sometimes even some of the native tribes would give the dogs the meat, and the tribes would eat the organ meats. But I'm not just talking about liver, I'm talking about heart, kidney, brain. These are all things that very few people consume nowadays. I'm going to put a link down below of a company, U.S. Wellness Meats, that has hamburgers with some of these organ meats in them, but I think that would be a great way to hide these organ meats because some people don't like the taste, like I don't like the taste of liver, so I have to have it hidden in different foods. I get my liver from cobb liver, you can get that in a can. Cobb liver has the most omega-3 of anything, and I'll consume maybe one or two cans of cobb liver every single week. But what's in these organ meats? Well, there's different things in different organs. If we take a look at what's in the heart muscle that's very, very high, coenzyme Q10. The heart has the most, and I do know in certain European cultures and countries, they make sausage with these organ meats. Vitamin A is in organ meats, you're going to get the most vitamin A from liver, and if you think about vitamin A, yes, it's good for the eyes, it's good for the inner skin, it's good for the arteries, and it's good for the immune system. So organ meats are also loaded with B12 to help your red blood cells and copper. That will help you make collagen because your arteries are made out of collagen, it's kind of a flexible protein. Let's get into number seven, fermented foods. Now, of course, you have sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, all the things I consume on a regular basis to help feed the microbiome, which is also very, very important for heart health. There's one fermented product called natel, super high in vitamin K2, but it's also high in another compound called natokinase. It's a very effective compound to reduce clotting. Number eight, sea salt is not a food, but okay, well, it might not be a food, but it's something that we put on our food, Himalayan sea salt, right? What is the difference between sea salt and regular salt? Sea salt has like 80 or 90 minerals, regular refined salt has two, sometimes they add stuff to it like anti-caking chemical, sometimes they add aluminum to it. They will tell you, you need to go low salt for the heart because we don't want to increase blood pressure, and this is something that's been indoctrinated to us. People are so afraid of salt. Well, guess what? Recently, they found that is not true. They found that not everyone needs to have a low salt diet. When you go low salt, you now trigger this hormone, it's called renin, that increase the blood pressure from the low salt. Now, I'm not telling you to have like a massive amount of salt, you just need adequate salt because there's certain people that are salt sensitive, if they have too much, they might have high blood pressure, but that usually is from low amounts of potassium, not high amounts of sodium. The point is, when you go too low with your sodium, you can end up with a lot of other additional problems, and one being high blood pressure, also the next one being high cortisol. One of the little simple health hacks that I recommend that seems to work really good is to take a little extra salt if you have a problem going to sleep at night, and you're going to find that you'll sleep a lot better, and so one indication that you're low in salt is number one, if you have problems going to sleep or staying asleep, and number two is if you crave salt. You want to start adding more salt to your food, not go for the chips, and also if you're low in salt, it can increase your risk of getting insulin resistance, which is actually the real cause of high blood pressure, plus on top of that, you need sodium chloride to increase more chloride to build up hydrochloric acid for stomach acid, and so if you don't have enough stomach acid, you get acid reflux, you get acid indigestion, you get more bloating, and that also could indirectly affect your heart and your sleeping. Number nine, fatty fish. I'm talking about salmon, okay, wild-caught salmon, omega-3 fatty acids, super important for the heart, but don't forget about the smaller fish, sardines, great way to get your omega-3, anchovies, mackerel, and let's not forget about number 10, collagen. I'm talking about bone broth, the skin on the fish or the chicken, and so when you eat collagen, it doesn't just all turn into the collagen on your body, 90% of it actually goes into a pool of amino acids that your body will use for whatever it needs, but 10% of this collagen is not broken down fully into amino acids, instead, 10% of that collagen is in these peptide chains. A peptide is a series of amino acids on a chain, so these get absorbed in the intestines, go into the blood, and act as a signaling molecule, a messenger to tell the body to make collagen and repair collagen, and then if you don't have enough collagen, you end up getting rigid arteries, and the reason we've been talking about this is that when you consume the meat that we eat nowadays, you're only getting between 1% and 3% collagen when we really need a lot more, and if you're just living on like tender steak and easy to eat protein, you're not getting enough collagen. I personally add collagen to my coffee every morning, and I get enough collagen, I don't have to worry about it through the rest of the day, and since we're on the topic of the heart, I did another video on how to unclog your heart, and I put all the information in this video right here, you should check it out right now.