Eating foods such as avocados, bananas and spinach linked to lower risk of heart conditions, hospitalisation or death
Eating foods rich in potassium, such as avocados, bananas and spinach, could reduce your risk of heart conditions, hospitalisation and death by 24%, a study suggests.
Previous research has shown that cutting out salt from meals can slash your risk of heart problems. Reducing the number of meals to which you add salt or ditching it altogether can make a huge difference to your heart health.
Potassium increases the amount of salt your body removes from the bloodstream. In a study, scientists set out to understand whether more potassium might benefit people by reducing their cardiovascular risk.
The senior study author, Prof Henning Bundgaard, a professor at Copenhagen University hospital, said: “The human body evolved on a potassium-rich, sodium-poor diet – when we were born and raised on the savannah and eating [fruit and vegetables]. We [now] tend to go to [a] modern diet that is processed foods and, the more processed, we see more and more sodium in the food and less potassium, meaning that the ratio between the two has changed from 10:1 to 1:2 – a dramatic change.
