How To Keep Your Heart Healthy.
Introduction.
Keeping your heart healthy is simple when you set goals that you will put them into action it is not a simple task when you are not practicing those goals on a daily basis. When you start doing small things every day that keep your body healthy you will have a better chance of living longer, happier and a healthier life. Depending on the things that you do to keep your heart healthy will make you less venerable to other heart diseases like diabetes.
Making small changes in your life can bring a big difference in your heart health both to children and teenagers. Making choices of how to maintain your heart is difficult without someone to guide you or without the practical hints of following that will make your life great while strengthening your heart.
The following are simple tips that one can follow to ensure that his or her heart is healthy
1.Reduce the amount of salt in your diet.
Eating a varied diet of healthy food will prevent heart diseases and will help your weight, cholesterol and manage the level of blood pressure. Avoid eating food with a lot of salt for it will prevent you from blood pressure. Consuming too much of salt that contains sodium and chloride will increase the risk of high blood pressure which is the major risk factor for heart disease.
The amount of salt varies depending on which type of food you are eating. Food that is naturally occurring like vegetables, meat, and fruits the presence of salt that they contain is very small in quantity, unlike food that is manufactured where salt is used as flavor and preservative. The food that we eat every day contains 75% of salt intake because mostly we eat food that is packed and processed.
In order to ensure that your diet contains the least amount of salt ensure that it is made up of the following;
Eat a diet that contains proteins
Make sure your diet has different protein sources like seafood, fish, poultry, nuts and seed, legumes and lean meat that always contain a low amount of sodium. Make use of herbs and spices to flavor food instead of adding salt or sodium in your diet in order to maintain your heart in a healthy way.
Use fat products oil while cooking.
To keep your heart health, eat healthy fat choices such as nuts, seeds, olives, avocados and use their product oil while cooking to ensure you do not add a lot of raw sodium in your diet.
Reduce the intake of fatty diet
Make sure the intake of fat dairy diet is reduced. You can avoid drinking too much of unflavored milk, yogurt, and cheese. You can also try to reduce these fat diets by using water as a drinking choice in order to avoid obesity that brings the risk of high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart diseases. By doing this you will increase the health of your body especially the heart.
Eat fruits
Make sure in your diet you include plenty of vegetables, whole grains, and fruits in order to neutralize the amount of salt intake hence keeping your heart healthy.
Take the salt recommended
In order to reduce the amount of blood pressure and lower the risk of heart disease, the Heart Foundation always recommend that adults should take less than 5g of salt a day while for children they should take less than a teaspoon a day. Always consult your doctor or any other health practitioner to direct you what`s right for you and your body in general including your heart.
The extent at which one can reduce blood pressure depends on age, weight, stress and physical activity level but one should always reduce the amount of salt he or she is taking in his or her diet in order to stabilize your level of blood pressure. High intake of salt in your body affects your health and your body in many ways other than increasing the level of blood pressure. Too much intake of salt may lead to other conditions like heart attack, stroke, kidney problems and kidney stones, osteoporosis and thickening of the heart muscle or left ventricular hypertrophy.
2. Avoid smoking
Freeing away from smoking is the best option one can make in order to protect your heart. Smoking a lot will affect the vessels that supply blood to your heart and other parts of the body because you are limiting the amount of oxygen that enters your blood hence damaging the blood vessels wall.
Also, avoid second-hand smoking that causes heart disease to non-smokers as it damages the arteries and platelets in your blood that stick together and forms a clot in your heart just like a person who smokes.
Effect of smoking on your heart
Causes atherosclerosis
Smoking will contribute to atherosclerosis that occurs when there are clogging and narrowing of the arteries which reduce the amount of blood supply and the amount of oxygen available throughout the whole body.
Causes heart attack and stroke
Smoking will also increase the stiffness of blood vessels making them harder for them to expand and contract as needed and the likelihood of them to split is high. Making your blood vessels stiff will change the arteries hence causing heart attack and stroke. A heart attack will happen when you have completely blocked the arteries that supply blood to an area of your heart.
How to quit smoking
Quitting from smoking is a difficult task and one should consult a doctor or a health practitioner who will guide how you will give up on smoking. After you quit smoking don`t give up as many people slip up after they quit when they start smoking again. When you find yourself smoking again don`t consider this a failure instead try to think what made you smoke again so that you can deal with this situation next time.
Once you quit from smoking your risk of heart attack or stroke will reduce by half and after a long period of time staying away from smoking your risk of coronary heart diseases and stroke will be like of that person who has never smoked.
3. Maintain a healthy weight
By maintaining a healthy weight will reduce the risk of heart diseases and other health problems and you will be able to know your body mass index and waist measurements. One of the best things you can do for your health and wellbeing of your heart is to make a commitment to maintaining a healthy weight.
If you are planning to lose weight, plan a healthy way of doing and you can do it by changing your eating habits, do physical activities and avoid sitting for long hours. On how to lose your weight you can consult your health practitioner, doctor or any Accredited Practicing Dietitian who will direct you to your weight.
To know if you are having a healthy weight and height always be using a BMI tool which is very useful to your healthy though it only estimate and doesn`t take into account the gender, age body composition and ethnicity. Having a healthy body will lower various risk of heart problems and also will help you lower your blood pressure and cholesterol.
How to get a healthy weight.
One of the best things you can do for your long-term health is losing weight in a healthy way. Though losing weight it takes more time and require commitments and mindset and don`t think about it as going on diet which is a short-term, but as a choice of leading you to healthier life.
Nourish your body with fresh foods and reduce the intake of processed food and always take every opportunity to try to be as active as possible so as to achieve your weight loss goals. Also as you eat try to be mindful of how you are eating by considering your portion size so as to avoid over eating.
Try to be more active by reducing the amount of time you spend sitting down. Always make sure you are standing more often and moving around your home or workplace when you are out and about.
If you are in workplace make use of stairs instead of lifts this is because the more you huff and puff the better. Also try to incorporate physical activity like exercises wherever you can. Walking is just a way of having fun and will help you keep a healthy heart.
4. Manage your blood pressure and cholesterol
How to manage cholesterol
Cholesterol are fatty substances that a body need for healthy and are carried by your blood. Too much of cholesterol can be dangerous to your body for it will cause heart attack or stroke. Most natural food contains cholesterol that is carried out by Lipoproteins and the two main types that carry cholesterol to and from the cells are called low-density lipoproteins and high-density lipoproteins. The lower the density of the lipoproteins the fatter it contains and the higher the density of lipoproteins the less fat it contains.
High-density lipoproteins is always considered as a good cholesterol because it prevents keeping cholesterol that builds up in your articles while low-density lipoprotein is always considered as a bad cholesterol because it causes the cholesterol to build up in the arteries hence blocking those arteries that leads to heart attack. Triglycerides are a form of fat that is associated with high-density lipoproteins and it causes another risk of heart diseases by increasing them through the total level of cholesterol in the blood appears normal. When there are too much of low-density lipoproteins in the blood, it builds up in the wall of arteries causing hardening of arteries hence causing chest pain or heart attack.
How to manage blood pressure.
This is the pressure of your blood on the walls of arteries and as your heart pumps, it circulates around your body. A blood pressure that is high over a long period of time causes major risk factors for heart disease.
It is very important to have your blood pressure being checked at regular times and if it is persistent high it needs to be controlled as early as possible.
5. Find time to play
In order to keep a heart, healthy adults will need an approximate of 30 minutes of exercise for a period of five or more days a week. In the morning aim for an at least 10-minute walk and workout with hand weights in the lunch and ensure before dinner you dig some part of your garden in order to make sure you have fulfilled your goals. You can make exercise by playing with your kid's kickball or walking with your dog around your home. All kinds of exercise are important regardless of whether you mall walks with a co-worker during lunch break.
Conclusion.
While shopping it is always advisable to look at the label of a food or drink you are buying in order to see how much fat, salt, and sugar it contains. This will help you understand what is in that drink or food you buy and how it fits in with the rest of your diet so as to help you keep a healthier choice of your body and heart.
Regular schedule checkups like blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and physical exams are important in order to keep your heart healthy. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are two critical conditions that can hurt your hurt silently if not tested. Consult your doctor or your health practitioner to see how often you need heart checkup in order to ensure you are always safe about your healthy.
