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How to keep your heart healthy?
While heart disease kills more men and women than any other disease in developed countries, it turns out there's a lot you can do to keep your heart healthy. Each of us has significant control over most of these risk factors. And therefore, to a large extent, each of us holds our cardiac fate in our own hands. Even people who have strong a genetic predisposition to heart disease can often significantly delay the onset of heart problems by adopting healthy lifestyles.
1. Manage your diet and weight. A poor diet often leads to obesity, and obesity can be very damaging to the heart and vascular system (especially when it is accompanied by a sedentary lifestyle).
2. Get plenty of exercise. A sedentary lifestyle is very bad for the entire cardiovascular system, and it can also contribute to metabolic problems, such as high cholesterol and high blood sugar. Getting plenty of exercise is one of the best things you can do for your heart.
3. Don’t smoke. Of all the things you can do to ruin your health, smoking is the most ruinous. If you smoke you are likely to develop heart disease decades earlier than you otherwise might. Even if you don't develop premature heart disease, you will likely suffer from one of the other scourges of smoking - cancer, lung disease, premature aging, and other conditions that make you sickly, or wrinkly and old, before your time.
4. Manage your cholesterol levels. Blood lipids - cholesterol and triglycerides - are important determinants of cardiac risk. You should know about bad cholesterol, good cholesterol, and the things you can do - diet, lifestyle and medications - to keep your cardiac risk as low as possible.
5. Manage your blood pressure. Hypertension (high blood pressure) is extremely common, and is often poorly treated. Unfortunately, inadequately-treated hypertension can lead to both heart attacks and especially strokes.
6. Control your blood sugar. Insulin resistance - which can manifest as either diabetes of metabolic syndrome - leads to high blood sugar and a host of other metabolic problems that greatly increase your risk of heart disease.
1. Manage your diet and weight. A poor diet often leads to obesity, and obesity can be very damaging to the heart and vascular system (especially when it is accompanied by a sedentary lifestyle).
2. Get plenty of exercise. A sedentary lifestyle is very bad for the entire cardiovascular system, and it can also contribute to metabolic problems, such as high cholesterol and high blood sugar. Getting plenty of exercise is one of the best things you can do for your heart.
3. Don’t smoke. Of all the things you can do to ruin your health, smoking is the most ruinous. If you smoke you are likely to develop heart disease decades earlier than you otherwise might. Even if you don't develop premature heart disease, you will likely suffer from one of the other scourges of smoking - cancer, lung disease, premature aging, and other conditions that make you sickly, or wrinkly and old, before your time.
4. Manage your cholesterol levels. Blood lipids - cholesterol and triglycerides - are important determinants of cardiac risk. You should know about bad cholesterol, good cholesterol, and the things you can do - diet, lifestyle and medications - to keep your cardiac risk as low as possible.
5. Manage your blood pressure. Hypertension (high blood pressure) is extremely common, and is often poorly treated. Unfortunately, inadequately-treated hypertension can lead to both heart attacks and especially strokes.
6. Control your blood sugar. Insulin resistance - which can manifest as either diabetes of metabolic syndrome - leads to high blood sugar and a host of other metabolic problems that greatly increase your risk of heart disease.
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