Each and every person in this world including me and you have a strong desire to live a healthy life without being sick or diseased. Maintaining a healthy diet with lots of “greens” especially cruciferous vegetables can help you achieve that purpose without much trouble. You may dislike them because of their bitter taste and pungent smell but, it has been found that cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower have a strong ability to prevent or minimize clogged arteries, or atherosclerosis, one of the main causes of heart attack, stroke and sometimes even death.
Cruciferous vegetables belong to the Brassica genus category and they are rich sources of many valuable nutrition’s such as fiber; vitamins C, E, and K; several carotenoids; folate; and minerals that are essential for you to maintain a healthy body.
When you eat these cruciferous vegetables, glucosinolates within them break down into active components such as nitriles, indoles, isothiocyanates, and thiocyanates and comes to your body, giving you the ability to minimize the risk of being exposed to cancers. Also, the valuable nutrition’s in these vegetables have the ability to prevent atherosclerosis (a condition where deposits, or plaques made of cholesterol, fat molecules, calcium, and other compounds in the blood, build up on the inside walls of) by less thickening carotid artery wall.
Research studies have found that a person who consumes more green vegetables have 0.05 millimeters thinner carotid artery wall than who does not, and a 0.1-millimeter decrease in the wall can reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke by 10%- 18%.
The surprising factor is that if you increase the consumption of cruciferous vegetables by 10 extra grams you can reduce the thickness of carotid artery wall 0.8%! So, make a small change in your dietary portion and enjoy a happy healthy and long life without heart attacks and strokes.