Cardiovascular diseases have become so prevalent in society today. To reduce the mortality rate, individuals can choose heart healthy lifestyle as smart choices will pay off the rest of their life. Here are the most important prevention tips for heart healthy lifestyle:
Heart Healthy Lifestyle Diet
Choose heart healthy foods to avoid heart diseases and its consequences. Nutrition and diet play a vital role in keeping your heart healthy lifestyle. So choose smartly what to eat and what to avoid.
List of foods to eat:
- Eat fruits and vegetables
- Eat whole grains
- Eat low fat dairy products
- Use olive, sunflower or soybean oils
- Eat poultry, fish like salmon
- Eat healthy nuts like walnuts, almonds
- Eat dark chocolate
- Eat berries, flaxseeds, oatmeal
- Eat tofu, avocados
- Hydrate yourself
List of foods to avoid:
- Do not eat coconut, canned fruits
- Do not fried vegetables and frozen fruits
- Limit the intake of saturated fat
- Limit the intake of trans fat
- Do not eat butter, bacon fat
- Avoid red meat
- Limit the intake of sodium
- Limit intake of sweets
- Control your portion size
- Limit intake of red wine, sugar-sweetened beverages
Heart Healthy Lifestyle – Daily exercise & maintain a healthy weight
“Exercise is a celebration of what your body can do. Not a punishment for what you ate.”
Daily exercise for about 30 minutes can keep your heart pumping. Overweight and obesity increase the risk of heart disease. So keep your weight healthy as per your height. To know if your body has excess fat or not, do BMI (Body Mass Index) check up by any physician, so that you cut down the fat by exercising and healthy eating.
Doctors recommend moderate intensity exercise which includes brisk walking, cycling, jogging, etc. All these exercises lower the levels of other problems as well as blood pressure, sugar and cholesterol.
No smoking & limited alcohol
“Smoking is injurious to health”
Prevention is better than cure. Quit Smoking is better than the risk factors caused by it like coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke. While you are smoking, carbon monoxide combines with oxygen in your blood. This raises your pulse and heart rate high by driving your heart to work harder to supply enough oxygen. Use any kind of tobacco is bad for health, so get rid of this bad habit. Adopt good heart healthy lifestyle and stay healthy.
Drinking too much alcohol also raises your blood pressure. So limit the intake of alcohol up to 2 drinks for men and 1 drink for women.
Manage stress and make sleep a priority
There is a big connection between stress and heart disease. When you are in stress, you can have headache, less sleep, exhaustion. If stress level increases then your heart works harder which can cause heart disease as well. So the best way to keep your heart healthy is to reduce stress. Daily exercises, healthy die and sound sleep can reduce stress very fast.
Lack of sleep causes harm to your health. Less sleep can cause high blood pressure, heart attack, diabetes, depression and obesity. Adults need seven to nine hours of sleep every night to be refreshed. Make sleep a priority in your life.
Another risk of life is sleep apnea which causes heart disease. Sleep apnea happens due to the blockage of the airway by the throat muscles. If you snore loudly, gets less air while sleeping, wake up with sore throat and dry mouth then you must be aware of sleep apnea. Do consult with Doctor and take proper treatment through Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP). Thus, you can be away from heart disease.
Get regular health check up
Hypertension and high cholesterol can harm your heart and veins. Without testing for them, you won’t be able to know whether you have these conditions. General screening can disclose to you what problems you have and how you can take care of it.
The side effects and a doctor’s proposal, one must complete the recommended tests for the determination of the problem. Here are the different tests listed below:
1. Blood Pressure and BMI Check up:
Body mass index (BMI) is measure of body fat based on height and weight. The higher the BMI, the greater the risk of some diseases, including high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, stroke, osteoarthritis, some cancers, and type 2 diabetes.
- A BMI below 18.5 (shown in white) is considered underweight
- A BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 (green) is considered healthy
- A BMI of 25 to 29.9 (yellow) is considered overweight
- A BMI of 30 or higher (red) is considered obese
Blood Pressure Range:
- 90 over 60 (90/60) or less: Low blood pressure.
- More than 90 over 60 (90/60) and less than 120 over 80 (120/80): Normal blood pressure.
- More than 120 over 80 and less than 140 over 90 (120/80-140/90): Prehypertention.
- 140 over 90 (140/90) or higher (over a number of weeks): High blood pressure (hypertension).
2. Blood Glucose (fasting and PP): The blood sugar concentration or blood glucose level is the amount of glucose (sugar) present in the blood of a human. Glucose is transported from the intestines or liver to body cells via the bloodstream, and is made available for cell absorption via the hormone insulin, produced by the body primarily in the pancreas. A persistently high level is referred to as hyperglycemias; low levels are referred to as hypoglycaemia. Diabetes mellitus is characterized by persistent hyperglycemias from any of several causes, and is the most prominent disease related to failure of blood sugar regulation.
3. Hemogram + ESR:
A complete blood count (CBC) is a blood test used to evaluate your overall health and detect a wide range of disorders, including anaemia, infection and leukaemia.
Normal ESR test results:
- Women < age 50 should have an ESR < 20 mm/hr.
- Men < age 50 should have an ESR < 15 mm/hr.
- Women > age 50 should have an ESR < 30 mm/hr.
- Men > age 50 should have an ESR < 20 mm/hr.
- Newborns should have an ESR < 2 mm/hr.
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Children from 9 to 14 should have an ESR between 3 and 13 mm/hr.
4. ECG:
An electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG) is a test that checks for problems with the electrical activity of your heart. An EKG shows the heart’s electrical activity as line tracings on paper. The spikes and dips in the tracings are called waves.
5. Total Lipid Profile: There are four major fat components of lipid panel.
Total Cholesterol Levels
- Normal 200 mg/dL (5.17 mmol/L)
- Borderline (for high cholestrol) 200 mg/dL and 239 mg/dL (5.17–6.18 mmol/L)
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At or > 240 mg/dL (6.21 mmol/L ) high total cholesterol levels. This may put you at an increased risk for heart disease.
High-Density Lipoproteins
Any HDL > 60 mg/dL (1.56 mmol/L) is considered high.
Low-Density Lipoproteins
LDL levels less than 100 mg/dL ( 2.6 mmol/L) are considered optimal.
Triglyceride Levels
Triglyceride levels should be below 150 mg/dL (1.69 mmol/L).
6. Stress Test or 2D Echo: Two-Dimensional Echocardiography can provide excellent images of the heart, paracardiac structures, and the great vessels. From the pictures it is to measure the size of each part of your heart, to study motion and appearance of the valves and the function of the heart muscle.
7. Creatinine: Creatinine clearance test is advice in patients who are at high risk be screened for kidney disease to detect it in its earliest stages. Risk factors include diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, or a family history of these or kidney disease.
8. HsCRP: A high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (Hs-CRP) test is done to detect the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
