Unfortunately, most Americans eat meals that are heavy on saturated fats and salt and drink lots of empty calories, contributing to heart disease and strokes.
Blood Clot Formation
Blood has to flow freely through arteries, veins and organs, then back to the lungs and heart. But if there is damage to the skin or blood vessels, blood then has to solidify, or clot, to stop the bleeding.
A blood clot begins with platelets, tiny components that gather at the site where the blood vessel damage occurred. The platelets clump together to form a plug, which reduces bleeding. The platelets also release a chemical that starts the blood clot formation process.
Once started, blood clot formation must be controlled and stopped before it can cause more harm than good. Natural anti-clotting substances are released to counteract a clot from extending beyond helpful boundaries.
As damaged tissue heals, the body slowly breaks down the clot and the body reabsorbs it.
Common Causes of Blood Clots
Atherosclerosis, or plaque buildup in the arteries is a major cause of artery damage and clots; diabetes; obesity; smoking; pregnancy; HIV treatments; heart failure; atrial fibrillation, which is an arrhythmia which causes blood to pool in the upper chambers of the heart, possibly causing blood clots to form; and organ transplants or dialysis shunts are all possible reasons for blood clots.
Foods that Help Form Blood Clots
Saturated Fats
It is recommended that animal products such as whole milk, fatty red meats, butter and cheese comprise less than 6 percent of our daily diet. Commercial baked goods like cakes, cookies and pies are also full of saturated fats.
Another study suggests that eating one high-fat meal a day takes your body about nine hours to rid itself of the stagnation that accompanies it. This includes blood circulation -- it slows after a high-fat meal. This suggests that eating two or three high-fat meals a day could mean round-the-clock blood sluggishness for the consumer.
Diet Soda
A large study of diet soda drinkers aged 40 and older had a surprising outcome. Sixty percent of diet soda drinkers had elevated risks for coronary heart disease and strokes. The funny thing is that researchers don’t yet know what causes this risk, but they caution against drinking any diet sodas at all if you are concerned about stroke risk. They estimate one soda a day may increase stroke risk by 48 percent.
Vitamin K
Vitamin K is known to thicken blood when taken in high doses. It is found in parsley, spinach, Brussels sprouts, wheat bran, Swiss chard, broccoli, liver, cauliflower, celery, leeks, collard greens and soybean oil. The list also includes miso and natto, both Japanese dishes, and fermented dairy such as yogurt and cheeses.
Prepared Foods from the Freezer or Pantry
You pull out a can of childhood memories -- chicken noodle soup. For the heck of it, read the label. The salt content of this soup is 1,100 mg of salt, aka sodium, almost three-fourths of the recommended daily allowance. In one can of soup!
Most Americans consume about 3,500 mg of salt a day, way higher than the recommended 1,500 mg or less daily. Those who consumed 4,000 milligrams of salt a day had double the risk of stroke than those that ate half that amount.
Sodium is listed as many forms on labels, so look for these ingredients: MSG or monosodium glutamate, baking soda, disodium phosphate, baking powder and sodium alginate.
Calcium
Known as a blood thickener, it helps build thick and strong blood vessels. Good calcium sources include low-fat milk, mozzarella cheese, almonds and tofu. Dehydration is the main cause of having too much calcium in the blood. Ensuring that you get enough water in a day is essential to keeping blood balanced.
Processed Meats
If you are a pastrami lover or enjoy bacon or hot dogs, reading this may change your mind about your meat choices. Preservatives used in these meats are abhorred by the medical community – sodium nitrite and nitrite – both shown to damage blood vessel walls directly by making artery walls hard and narrow. One research into papers on the subject of these meats found a 42 percent increase of coronary heart disease when the subjects ate one meal of processed meats a day.
Trans Fats Are Everywhere
Trans fatty acids are harmful, even in small amounts. An example is that for every 2 percent of consumed calories from trans fat, the risk of heart disease rises by 23 percent. That’s quite a ratio. The problem is that trans fats are ubiquitous in bakery goods, microwave popcorn, whipped toppings and French fries.
Trans fats increase the amount of fatty lipids and cholesterol in the blood, making them thicker and stickier. A study by the University of North Carolina demonstrated that women who ate the equivalent of two donuts a day had a 30 percent increase in the risk of ischemic strokes -- those that struck the brain.
Red Meat and Egg Yolk
We have all heard the warnings about eating too much red meat. But a 10-year study following women who ate large amounts of red meat seemed to confirm those warnings. Those women had a 42 percent higher chance of stroke due to the gradual clogging of arteries with protein plaque deposits. But here’s another warning to heed: Hemoglobin in the blood of red meat may pose a newly discovered threat to red meat eaters.
Researchers are looking into whether blood becomes thicker and more viscous because of the heme iron in red meat, thus increasing the chances of a stroke.
By getting informed about nutrition and getting familiar with your body’s needs, you can make healthy choices about what you put in it. Good health is more than luck; it is making informed choices to minimize the bad stuff and optimize healthy choices.