8 Ways To Improve Heart Health
Your heart pumps about 1.5 gallons of blood through your body every minute, delivering oxygen and essential nutrients to your tissues and organs. When it’s unhealthy can lead to severe problems like coronary artery disease, heart attack, and stroke. Here are eight ways to improve your heart health and enjoy life!
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio
By Amy Aporna Baroi
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds, and one person dies every 34 seconds due to cardiovascular disease in the United States.
It is the leading cause of death in the United States and worldwide, but studies have shown that lifestyle changes and managing risk factors can prevent heart disease.
Let’s discuss some effective methods to prevent heart disease!
#1 Change Your Diet
Eating a heart-healthy diet will go a long way in helping you stay fit and prevent heart disease.
According to the study “A Clinician's Guide to Healthy Eating for Cardiovascular Disease,” dietary approaches to lower high blood pressure, like vegetarian or Mediterranean diet, can effectively work to prevent cardiovascular diseases. A diet rich in vegetables and leafy greens, along with a sustainable source of protein like legumes, can help promote weight loss and reduce your risk of heart disease and all-cause mortality.
So eat vegetables, leafy greens, legumes, beans, nuts, whole grains, and fruits to keep you fit and your heart healthy.
#2 Which Foods To Avoid
While it is essential to know what to eat, it is equally important to know what to avoid.
Research at the Cleveland Clinic led by Dr. Stanley L. Hazen found that people who ate a diet rich in red meat had triple the levels of chemicals linked to heart disease compared to those on a diet rich in white meat or plant-based protein.
Eating 150 grams, a little more than five ounces, of processed meat per week increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by 46%. Five ounces of processed meat equals five slices of bacon or less than two hot dogs.
Limit these foods for a healthy heart:
● Junk foods
● Processed meat such as deli meats, bacon, sausages, spam, hot dogs, salami
● Red meats such as beef, pork, mutton, lamb
● Alcohol
#3 Limit Sugar
Sugary foods are empty calories and usually contain little vitamins, minerals, or antioxidants.
While you might enjoy devouring desserts, high sugar intake harms your heart health even if you're not overweight.
Sugar causes inflammation in the body that puts stress on your blood vessels which can lead to heart disease.
Here are some tips to limit sugar consumption:
Read Food Labels
Reading food labels is extremely important to avoid sugar and harmful ingredients. Bread, condiments, and salad dressings are everyday products with hidden sugar content.
Ingredients are listed from the highest to the lowest amount, so if a label lists sugar in the first few ingredients, it’s best to steer clear of that product.
Foods often use names other than sugar on the label including:
● High fructose corn syrup
● Cane sugar
● Cane juice
● Dextrose
● Sucrose
● Dextrin
● Rice syrup
● Molasses
● Caramel
● Maltose
Read labels and familiarize yourself with all the names used to avoid sugar.
Eat fruits
Fruits are naturally sweet, filled with fiber, minerals, and antioxidants, making them the perfect fix for your sweet tooth without the harmful effects of processed foods with high amounts of sugar.
Choose whole fruits instead of drinking sugary sodas and eating processed sugary desserts. You can also use fruits like peaches, blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries to sweeten your cereals.
Use spices, fruits, and nuts for cooking and flavoring food
Increase food flavor and nutritional value with spices like pepper, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, and turmeric. Applesauce is an excellent replacement for sugar in baked desserts, fresh fruits, dried fruits, and nuts.
All of these things will increase the nutritional value of the food, help you avoid sugar, and make your food taste much better.
#4 Manage Health Conditions
Medical conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol put you at higher risk for cardiovascular diseases. Properly managing these conditions will help prevent heart disease.
Get regular checkups with your doctor and follow the given guidelines.
If you have diabetes, regularly check your blood sugar levels, and keep them within the target range to avoid further complications.
Monitor your blood pressure and ask your doctor to check your cholesterol levels during routine blood work.
You can control many medical conditions and chronic diseases with a healthy diet and exercise.
#5 Avoid Drinking, Drugs, and Smoking
Drugs, alcohol, and smoking all increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Injecting illegal drugs can lead to collapsed veins and infected heart valves.
Drinking alcohol increases blood pressure and heart rate and can eventually weaken heart muscles and cause heart attack and stroke.
We all know smoking is harmful to health. But secondhand smoke is dangerous too.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people exposed to secondhand smoke, even for a short while, can experience harmful effects.
Secondhand smoke causes nearly 34,000 premature deaths from heart disease each year and increases the risk of stroke by 20-30%.
Avoid alcohol, drugs, and smoking to keep your heart healthy.
#6 Stay Physically Active
A healthy diet and regular exercise are crucial to heart disease prevention.
Inactivity increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack, and stroke..
The American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise per week.
Exercise helps pump blood more efficiently, enables you to stay fit, and prevents excess weight gain that will help keep your heart in good shape.
If you are new to exercise, start slowly and increase the duration and intensity of exercise over time.
#7 Manage Stress
The mind and body are interconnected. A negative psychological state can put you at risk for heart disease.
People who manage stress well and have high life satisfaction have a lower risk of heart disease.
Take care of your mental health as well to keep your heart healthy.
To manage stress effectively:
● Exercise regularly
● Spend time in nature and with animals
● Pray or meditate
● Include relaxing activities in your day
● Spend time with friends and family
● Listen to calming music
● Seek professional help from a psychologist when necessary
#8 Sleep Well
Working late and getting up early has become the norm in our busy lives.
People seek relaxation after work and thus enjoy watching Netflix or scrolling through social media late at night. App notifications are constantly disturbing our sleep with never-ending pings. But irregular sleep patterns negatively affect your heart health by disturbing the body’s circadian rhythm and increasing inflammation and the risk of heart disease.
Sufficient sleep helps regulate blood sugar, keep blood pressure normal, and reduce inflammation.
A regular sleep schedule, for instance, sleeping between 10 PM and 11 PM, is associated with a lower risk of heart disease. Talk to your doctor if you have sleep issues to find better ways to get more sound and healthy sleep.
Conclusion
While you can’t change unmodifiable risk factors like ethnicity, gender, and age, lifestyle modifications can significantly reduce the risk of heart disease.
So do your best to keep healthy eating habits, exercise regularly, manage your stress well, sleep properly, and avoid substance abuse.
If you face issues even after taking all the preventative measures, consult your doctor to find out what other steps to take to resolve the health concern.
About The Author:
Amy Aporna Baroi is a Freelance Writer in the Health & Wellness Parenting Space. She graduated with a BA in English. She is a polyglot who knows four languages. Currently, she is pursuing her Masters in Early Childhood Development.
When Amy isn’t writing, she loves to spend time God and her cats.
