Improve Your Heart And Overall Health With These Recommendations
Your heart and your heart health are perhaps one of the most important and often overlooked aspects of our health and wellness. The heart is always working, if it falters just slightly it can cause serious issues for you which means heart health is of utmost importance for your well being. While I feel we often talk about heart health in a passive way, we are not always making daily decisions that are good for our hearts. Ultimately this is because heart health is not a one size fits all cure. Our genetics and predispositions as well as our lifestyle all affect how our heart will function. Unfortunately, many factors are outside of our control such as genetic predispositions for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes, but with the knowledge of what our strengths and weaknesses are we can determine what our game plans should be with heart health.
The first step is to get to the doctor and get some tests and blood work done. Track your family medical history prior to going to the doctor so you two can combine this information with the test results to get a good picture of what your baseline is for heart health. If you have predispositions for high blood pressure and cholesterol you will have to be extra cautious with behaviors that could further exasperate your conditions. Regardless of your family history though, we all can do the same things to greatly improve our heart health.
Keep Moving
It seems to be a trend this week, but keeping the body active truly is the best way to ensure your health stays in tip top shape. The body truly is meant to stay in motion and the easiest and most effective way to keep yourself healthy is to keep active. It does not have to be boring or tiresome activities, just simply anything other than sitting on the couch. Sports, dance, gardening, cooking and so on. The best strategy is to have a combination of light and rigorous activities throughout your week. Not only do these activities help your heart they will also boost your mood and can provide stress relief and socialization.
Stop Smoking
Tobacco use is dangerous for a variety of reasons, from heart health to blood pressure and lung disease. Of course we all know this but if you happen to have the habit, knowing it still isn't enough to make yourself stop. Quitting is incredibly difficult but there are tons of online and app resources available now to help ease you into decreasing and eventually quitting your tobacco habits. Though it may feel like an impossible dream, just two weeks after you stop smoking your risk for heart attack already decreases. Your entire body starts healing quickly once you quit smoking, with healing occurring just 8 hours after the last cigarette.
Eat Heart Healthy
We hear this term a lot and probably see it on different cereals and oatmeals but what does it mean? Because cholesterol and diabetes issues can negatively affect your heart, eating heart healthy simply means eating in a way to avoid too much cholesterol and sugars. This includes eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, low fat dairy, whole grains and lean meats. Eating fish twice a week is also a great way to increase your heart health. Also avoiding items with high cholesterol and saturated fats, which are found in red meat, rich dairy, convenience and fried foods as well as limiting alcohol, sugar and sodium. Another thing to avoid is trans fatty acids which are a little bit more tricky to uncover but tend to be in processed foods, baked goods, fast food and fake butters. The quick key here is the more you have to prepare a food item the less likely it is to have trans fatty acids.
Lose Weight
If you are not in a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI), then the most important thing to do for your heart is to get to a healthy BMI. This does not mean you have to be a fitness model or anything of the sort, just that you are in a healthy range. Keeping your body in a healthy weight range not only decreases chances of heart disease but helps just about every aspect of your body.
Don't Stress
Raised cortisol levels and other biochemical stress responders can raise blood pressure and increase your heart rate which puts stress on your heart. Though we will all feel stress and experience this, the danger from emotional stress is that you will keep revisiting the stressful thoughts putting yourself in a place where your cortisol levels are always slightly elevated. You can combat these stress responses by using our mindfulness guides here and guides to breathing here.
Dark Chocolate and Red Wine
After all of these don'ts, it is fun to get a do that we all could possibly enjoy. Dark chocolate and red wine both have been linked to lowering blood pressure and helping heart health, but mind you this is only in moderation. Drinking a bottle of red will not increase your heart health nor will eating a bar of chocolate. But a glass or two of red wine and a serving of dark chocolate are both indulgent ways to help your heart health.
By focusing on our hearts we not only save ourselves from future illness but also will increase our overall health and wellness. Afterall, being active and managing stress appropriately will make us not just physically healthy, but mentally healthy as well. With a better mindset we are also more enjoyable to be around making our friends and loved ones all the more happy to see us. So here's to heart health!
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