According to Dr Hilary Jones, a healthy lifestyle is the key to a healthy heart. This means eating a low-fat diet, taking regular exercise, eliminating tobacco use, drinking in moderation, keeping your weight in check and managing diabetes, if you have it.
Practicing Common Sense
Awareness of all of the factors that lead to heart complications is important in order to reduce the risk. For example, a diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol can increase the build-up of plaque, a fatty substance in the arteries that supply blood to the heart… This build-up of this plaque is called atherosclerosis. The plaque build-up then reduces the flow of blood by narrowing the blood vessels. This can lead to a blood clot that blocks the passage. If this happens, a heart attack or stroke is likely to occur. This is why, for those known to be at risk, blood-thinning medications are prescribed to reduce the risk of clots.
A lifestyle that lacks sufficient exercise can also diminish our heart’s performance. You will see elsewhere that regular exercise is Dr Hilary’s No.1 priority for leading a full life and an extended lifetime. So, since the heart is a muscle, it needs physical activity to ensure it functions at tip-top levels.
Exercise also lowers our blood pressure and, when combined with a healthy diet, this can help us control our weight and also ward off the possibility of developing type-2 diabetes.
Don’t Stress
Stress can lead to a slew of different problems, most of them affecting your heart. Stress triggers a rush of hormones that spike the heart rate, raise blood pressure and slow down the digestive process to divert all the energy to combat the stress-inducing situation. For this reason, we need to learn to control our response so that we can handle stress. When we do feel very stressed we need to have our own way of de-stressing, which may vary from one individual to another. Coping mechanisms are something that you can teach yourself, whether you choose to de-stress through exercise or meditation. Whatever your choice, it’s important to be able to take the stress out of your life whenever you need to because it will protect you both mentally and physically.
Do eat …
… a healthy breakfast, it’s the most important meal of the day. Porridge is rated as a superfood. A bowl of porridge can keep you going for most of the day. Equally, some of the well-known cereal brands, such as Kellogg’s, together with milk, supply us with as many as ten important nutrients in our daily diet.
So, a grain-based breakfast not only gives us the fuel we need for the day, the fibre, vitamins and minerals in breakfast cereals also helps to maintain a healthy heart.
Medication and Treatment
If you already have coronary artery disease or angina, you can still lead a happy, healthy life, providing you’re receiving the appropriate medical attention, which includes medication.
Taking an aspirin every day may help to lower your risk, because aspirin makes your blood thinner and therefore a blood clot is less likely to form. However, in some cases aspirin can cause gastrointestinal bleeding and other problems, so it’s important to discuss this course of medication with your GP first.
There are cholesterol-lowering medicines such as statins that lower the risk of heart attacks in men, although there is currently insufficient evidence to show that these medicines work as well for women who have never suffered a heart attack.
Research and development of these medicines is ongoing, and positive new developments are occurring.
Warning Signs
If you think your heart is not as healthy as it should be, you should make an appointment with your GP for a check-up. It is a fact that some heart attacks do occur without warning, but in the majority of cases there are pre-attack warning signs, including:
• Chest pain, pressure, a feeling of heaviness or discomfort that lasts longer than several minutes, or comes and goes at intervals
• Pain or discomfort that radiates from your chest to your stomach, neck, arms, shoulder or jaw
• Shortness of breath or shallow breathing that occurs before chest pain or is caused while suffering chest pain
• Heart palpitations—faster-than-normal, strong or throbbing heartbeat
• Feelings of weakness, exhaustion, light-headedness, fainting, cold sweats, nausea
Dr Hilary’s Do’s and Don’ts For Heart Health
DON’T Smoke: Smoking can lead to coronary heart disease and other heart complications
DO Walk and Exercise Regularly: The more active you are the more fit you are, which keeps your heart pumping and impact risk factors for heart disease
DON’T Eat Fast Food: Fast food has high cholesterol, which can clog arteries
DO Eat Fruits And Vegetables: Fruits and vegetables have important nutrients that promote a healthy heart
DO Drink Tea: Green and black tea has been known to reduce bad cholesterol
See Also:
The Dangers of High Blood Pressure
