Your heart is the most essential organ of the body. This 250-350 grams little ticker pumps life into every part of your being. However, when it comes to taking care of the heart, we tend to adopt a very chevalier attitude. This often leads to heart problems, which disrupts our overall well-being. Hence, we must work on our daily routines to ensure the ideal state of our cardiovascular health.
In this article, we will cover all the changes you can make to your daily routines for a lifelong healthy heart.
Lifestyle Changes for a Healthy Heart
The following is a list of the alterations you can make to your lifestyle to ensure a healthy heart:-
- Eat a Balanced Diet: You must consume a healthy diet rich in nutrition. Eat fruits, vegetables, healthy fats and lean protients to always remain hale and hearty. On the other hand, avoid staturated fats to steer clear of high cholesterol.
- Regularly Move Your Body: Engage in exercise regularly, 150 minutes of physical activities like brisk walking, swimming, cycling and jogging can maintain the blood circulation and ease the pressure of pumping blood on the heart. Apart from this mainatain a healthy weight to refrain from obesity.
- Mind Your Stress Levels: Chronic stress can put a heavy strain on your heart. It can lead to the thickening of the blood vessels which results in serious heart diseases. Hence, you must manage your stress levels by adopting techniques like yoga, medidation and deep breathing. Besides this, do the things that make your mind and heart happy.
- Prioritize Quality Sleep: You must take at least 7 to 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Sleep keeps your heart rate in control and prevent arrhythmia (irregularities in the heart rhythm).
- Kick the Smoking Habit: Smoking can lead to cardiovascular conditions that can strain your heart. Hence, if you smoke, you must quit it right away.
- Keep Alcohol in Check: Excessive alcohol can lead to elevated heart rate and other cardiovascular condition. However, if you consume alcohol in moderation, it will not harm you much. Hence, keep a check of the amount of alcohol you consume.
- Regular Health Check-ups: Get regular health check-ups of everything related to heart helath. Monitor your blood pressure levels, get regular ECG done, check you blood sugar levels and keep a check of your LDL cholesterol levels.
- Maintain a Healthy Weight: By combining daily workout with healthy diets maintain a healthy weight to ensure the immaculate state of your cardiovascular being.
- Know Your Numbers: Learn your numbers, i.e. get to know your blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels and body mass index.
- Stay Hydrated: Drink adquate amount of water to keep the blood circulation in perfect state. If your blood circulation is well maintained, the heart will have to put in less effort to pump blood to the vital organs of the body.
- Steer Clear of Trans Fats: You must steer clear of trans fats. For this read the food labels and do not consume packaged foods that contain abundance of trans fats. Trans fats can lead to high LDL cholesterol levels which can result in the formation of plaque in the arteries.
- Build Social Connections: To stay happy, build social connections. Talk to as many people as possible and lead a happy life. If you stay happy, you will be away from any kind of stress and your heart health will remain ideal as well.
Downsides of Unhealthy Lifestyle on Heart
If you lead unhealthy lifestyle, it can have several downsides for your heart:-
- Development of Arrhythmia: If your lifestyle is sedentary, you are prone to developing arrhythmia (irregularities in the heart rhythem). This arrhythmia classification ranges from tachycaridia (heart rate above 100 beats per minute) to bradycardia (heart rate below 60 beats per minute).
- Heart Structure Abnormalities: With less physical activity, your heart can inevitably develop structural abnormalities.
- Myocardial Infraction: In severe cases, unhealthy lifetyle when coupled with other risk factors can result in myocardial infarction which, in common language is referred to as a heart attack.
- Elevated Blood Pressure: Due to unhealthy diet, there could be formation of plaque in the arteries which increseaes the blood pressure as heart has to put in more effort to pump blood to the vital organs of the body.
- Sensation of Fainting: Sometimes unhealthy lifestyle leads to decreased blood flow from heart to the brain which can cause a sensation of fainting in severe cases.
In conclusion, your heart requires good care from you at every step, so don’t take your heart health for granted. Take a highly nutritious diet, engage in physical activity, maintain a healthy weight and quit the bad habits of smoking and drugs consumption. You take care of your heart and your heart will take care of your overall well-being.
