There has been a significant downwards trend regarding the number of deaths and complications regarding heart disease within the United States. While this fact does bring relief that our fight against heart disease is in our favor, this statistic means that we need to push harder to defeat heart disease and minimize the chances of heart disease causing harm to friends, family, and ourselves as the risk remains quite high. Here’s a few ways you can prevent heart disease.
Exercise Daily
Exercising is one of the most important aspects of maintaining your heart health. Your heart, like many other components of your body, is a muscle. But unlike any other muscle in your body, the heart is especially important in that it pumps blood to the rest of your body every day. That’s why it’s very important to exercise your heart every day through cardiovascular exercise. Activities that involve aerobic exercises such as running, jogging, or walking at a brisk pace are a few examples of exercise that will help drastically reduce your risks for heart disease.
Eat a Balanced Diet
Your diet is extremely important in maintaining your heart health. Foods high in salt, sugar, processed carbohydrates, as well as trans and saturated fats have all been linked to increasing your likelihood of heart disease. Staying away or moderating your intake of those foods while also focusing on foods that contain whole grains, healthy fats, and lean protein are your best bet on maintaining weight and keeping your cardiovascular system in prime shape. Please read our article on Popular Diets and Heart Health if you’re interested in finding new ways you could alter your diet and decrease the likelihood of heart disease.
Getting a Good Night’s Rest
Lack of sleep has been attributed to a higher risk of heart disease. Most adults require a minimum of 7 hours of sleep every evening, which many of us fall short of due to busy lives and a multitude of work to do. Setting a good sleep schedule and maintaining that schedule is the easiest way to ensure that you can reduce heart disease risk as it pertains to sleeping.
Limiting Alcohol and Tobacco
These substances have been shown to increase the risk of heart disease through several factors. Alcohol can raise blood pressure and excessive drinking comes with a lot of calories which can lead to weight gain and a possible heart complication as a result. Tobacco can also raise blood pressure as well and has been linked directly to serious medical conditions such as strokes. To read more about tobacco and how it affects your chances of heart disease, please read our article Smoking and Heart Health.
Getting Screened
The best way to understand your risks of heart disease is to get screened constantly and consistently as your time, budget, and other circumstances allow. Everybody at any age can be afflicted by heart disease and by getting screened through methods such as checking your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, EKG, diabetes, etc. allows you the opportunity to catch the onset of heart disease conditions early and take appropriate actions to mitigate, alleviate, or prevent it from happening. We work with organizations such as the Nick of Time Foundation to provide free heart screenings for youth. Please visit our Upcoming Events page to get up to date for when we offer heart screenings.
Forbes Aggabao -Alexander’s Hope Intern
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