When it comes to taking care of your heart, what you do and what you do not do can truly make a difference to your health.
Most coronary diseases are caused by poor health and lifestyle choices. This means an unhealthy diet, smoking, drinking alcohol and physical passiveness can put you at risk of heart diseases far more than heredity may.
If you fear heart diseases or you simply want to live a healthier life with an optimally functioning ticker, here are five steps to follow to acquire a healthy and happy heart.
1. Check Your Health
Know your numbers on blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol. When these three are beyond the normal range, you truly have to be worried for your health.
Checking your C-reactive protein for inflammation and homocysteine will also tell you and your doctor how your overall health is doing. It will also assist you identify the health measures you need to take for improvement.
Discuss with your physician about what your goal levels should be and what you can do to achieve them. To help these numbers get back into a healthy range, adding physical exercises, losing weight and eating balanced meals will get you started in the right direction.
2. Pump Some Exercises
You will have to diligently burn roughly 500 to 900 calories a day or between 3,500 to 6,500 calories every week to reach optimal heart health.
Most calorie loss will come from your daily tasks. But even if you burned 900 calories for merely walking distances, doing laundry or cleaning your entire home, science still states that you are requires 60 minutes of stamina workout every week.
This means incorporating cardio exercises to elevate your heart rate is needed on a regular basis.Committing to 20-minute cardio workouts every day, three times a week is the least physical activity you can adopt but extending more hours of exercising is wiser.You can also add some strength training while you are at it.
Weight loss is not just about burning belly fat and reducing dress size to look more attractive. It has a great impact in improving your heart function and preventing fat deposits to accumulate inside your arteries.
3. Be Happy
There are numerous reasons why you need to stay calm and happy.
Patients suffering from depression are more likely to get a heart attack due to the intensity of emotions they feel and the hormone flow that goes with it. Though sadness, hostility and anger are controlled by the brain, they can trigger and elevate your blood pressure.
This leads to the conclusion that your emotions have a powerful connection to your heart. To get into a better mindset and a more positive outlook in life, you need to manage your daily stressors and cut them off your life.
4. Feed Your Heart
When going out to the grocery shop, make a list of the healthy foods you can buy. A good rule to remember is to buy fresh whole foods and stay away from anything processed. Eat more fiber, healthy fats from nuts, seeds and fish, and try to eliminate sugar.
There are also certain supplements you can take to prevent heart diseases. A bottle of natural multivitamins should be a staple in your medicine cabinet. You will need calcium, magnesium and vitamin D, B6 and B12.
Folate is a type of vitamin B that lowers homocysteine to its normal range. Since folate from your diet is only partially absorbed by the intestines, taking 400 micrograms of folic acid supplements will help.
Also fish oil supplements contain essential fatty acids that burn out your body’s inflammation and improve heart health.
5. Get Some Rest
Stress and not getting enough sleep is a major role in developing coronary diseases. If you do not sleep at least 7 to 8 hours each night, you are risking arterial aging and other heart-related illnesses.
Lack of sleep also has an association with high blood sugar. If you continue to sleep lesser hours, you are also risking yourself of diabetes.
It sounds easy, right? Well, once you get the hang of living a healthier lifestyle, it will not feel like a huge effort anymore. As long as you take these 5 steps and make it a habit, you will feel more active, energized and happy.
