Heart health is no laughing matter. Heart disease is one of the biggest killers in the world, especially in developed nations. Why is this? Well, there is a multitude of reasons. From a lack of activity to a negative diet to many other issues that occur, it could be that now is a great time to start thinking about your heart health. To do so will likely help you become a healthier person, and could maybe even help you avoid a negative scenario in the future.
This article will suggest methods to help heart health, personally and in the interest of others. Remember though that before enacting most of the changes in this article you consult with your Doctor and ask for a full checkup.
They will have the most qualified perspective of how you can change habits, or what habits might not be appropriate for you. For example, a seventy-five-year-old person might not benefit as well from immediately trying to run and begin a radically different diet than someone in their mid-twenties.
Exercise
One of the most important factors of this list will be placed first. Exercise. It is vitally important that you do this. Your heart is a muscle, and if it’s not trained it can become weak. Another factor here is that your heart will have to struggle with increased weight gain if you neglect to work out. There’s no mystery as to why this is. With increased mass, your body must work harder to pump blood around your body.
Not only does exercise help you strengthen your heart, but it will help you keep your waistline in check. This can be one of the most important things to enact, especially if you’ve been sedentary for a long time. Enacting healthy exercise habits can be easier than you think. Begin by starting cardio.
A program such as Couch 2 5k can work wonders here, but only if you keep at it and regularly try and make progress. While some might feel weightlifting is the better option to begin with, remember that heart health is an absolute priority here, and so raising your BPM through either high-intensity interval training or endurance cardio should be considered the most important place to begin.
Neglecting Vices
Our vices can also contribute to our health degradation. If you smoke, drink often, do drugs, or eat plenty of terrible foods, you can often find yourself putting on the pounds while also stressing your heart. Imagine being sedentary, overweight and also adding a smoking habit to that. It’s not hard to see why some people can shave years from their life getting to such a point.
Don’t make yourself one of these people. It might be that the first thing holding you back is your drinking habit or smoking. Work on this first. This will be a comfort you will continually return to while making positive life changes if you’re not careful. Keep in mind how good you will feel cutting out these issues, and before long you will find yourself becoming a better version of you.
Your vice might not also be as apparent as you think. It might be that you have an issue with personal portion control, adding plenty of unnecessary calories and negative fat or carbohydrate contents to your meals. To resolve this, it might simply be you redesign your diet or cook only with premeasured amounts of ingredients.
This is not easy to enact. In fact, it can be very, very hard. However, working at this will help strengthen you mentally and physically, and you can use that progress and built the discipline to give yourself the best chance of overcoming future issues you might experience.
It will also build a self-belief necessary to consider what is most important in life. The best part? As you start making healthy changes like this, you’ll realize just how excellent you feel. This can be reason enough to keep going, and can motivate you day after day.
Stress Reductions
Sometimes we can live a perfectly healthy life, but the circumstances in our lives can stress us out to such a worrying capacity that we might experience heart health. This is because when we’re stressed cortisol is pumped into our bloodstream, which can raise our heart rate among many other nasty things. Consider how you might always be in that state of ‘flight or fight’ at work. This can have long-term effects on your system, and most considerably against your heart. No matter who you are, you can be a victim of this.
This doesn’t mean you should quit your job. However, you should consider just what you are paying to sustain it. Might it be giving yourself more breaks could be a better option? How about picking your battles at work more wisely? What about considering if you really need that promotion, or if you need to resolve a situation at work that has been bothering you, but so far you have avoided?
Stress comes from many different directions, and it can be hard to manage it when this is the case. Luckily there are methods to help regulate yourself after work. For example, meditation. Meditation naturally lowers your heart rate thanks to its focus on concentration, and it can help your stress levels naturally decline.
This can be an important factor in feeling better from day to day, experiencing less of a cortisol response in hard situations, and being able to think more presently without having an emotional defense up all of the time. It’s amazing what this can do for your mental space, but also your physical space.
Caregiving
Remember that you aren’t the only person in the world who needs to maintain heart health. Sometimes issues can occur with others that might need your attention. It could be that you work a busy job with many stressed out colleagues. It might be one of your family members is suffering from an underlying issue. It could be a range of issues just like this that motivate you to take action. But what action should you take in the first place?
Well, learning how to impede health issues from becoming major problems before a professional arrives could be a good step. For example, learning CPR online via a registered course might simply help you save someones life one day.
That is perhaps one of the noblest things you can ever do, even if you help in some small part. Imagine how many people could be helped each year if everyone made an effort to qualify themselves with this knowledge, which is often cheap and easy to learn. We’d hazard a guess and say that the fatality statistics of heart disease, or many other problems, would at least take a small positive dent for the better.
Get Enough Sleep
Getting enough sleep is essential to good heart health. A lack of this can cause you to be at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, no matter your age or current health. You might be the fittest and active person in the daytime, but without sleep, you are likely to take a toll on your heart, and your health habits will function negatively in this case.
Sleep is absolutely essential because a lack of it can cause interruptions in underlying health conditions. A lack of it can also increase your blood pressure, generate inflammation among many other issues. It’s worth sleeping the necessary eight hours of sleep a night, and at an absolute minimum six depending on how you usually function, and what is right for you.
Take On More Physical Hobbies
This is a tip that many consider being irrelevant if they simply exercise. However, sometimes exercise is not enough. It might be that you work out for an hour three times a week, but then spend the rest of the week in a sedentary state.
For jobs where you have to sit down for long periods, this could be the case. With this in mind, taking on more physical hobbies could be absolutely essential for your long-term health. For example, you might also try and play sports twice a week, go for hikes, or try to attend a dance class.
There are many, many hobbies that involve movement, and not all of them ‘feel like exercise.’ For example, you might try and go swimming or scuba diving, or you might learn how to surf. It might be you enjoy climbing or many other hobbies that make exercise absolutely and profoundly fun. This can be better than being sat down all the time, particularly if you’re usually bound to a chair for the whole week. Look around! There are likely many activities to give you that wholesome sense of fun and wonder that offer heart health as a wonderful cherry on top.
With these tips, you are sure to find at least one wholesome method of achieving greater heart health. We wish you nothing but the best in your efforts.
