Want a stronger heart? Follow these 10 lifestyle changes to improve cardiovascular health, reduce risks, and stay fit for life! After Covid, the rate of heart attack has been rising followed by an increased death rate. Let us reveal the secret that this does not happen overnight. Did you ever notice when was the last time you went for a workout in the gym? Or when was the last time you went for a long walk? Can you recall how many times you ordered food from outside? The majority of us don’t even bother about these small things that impact on our health in the long run.
Here we are going to reveal every single piece of information that will help you to stay healthy. Without waiting much, let us start checking what are the things that we should follow to avoid heart attack. A healthy lifestyle not only strengthens the heart but also improves well-being all over. What you can do? You can try to adopt certain good habits with a healthy lifestyle. This reduces the risk of heart disease. You are the only one who has control over most of these risk factors! Let us go through some simple lifestyle changes that you should make to prevent heart disease and live a healthy life in the upcoming years
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Healthy Eating Habits
Do you know that your eating habits can affect your heart? Unhealthy food can lead to clogging of your arteries. To avoid these problems you need to maintain a proper diet.
- Include vitamin and protein-rich food in your diet.
- Nuts, olive oil and avocado are healthy fats that are good for your heart, so try to consume them.
- Take proteins like chicken and beans which do not contain any unnecessary fats.
- Consuming whole grain can be a smart choice as it lowers your cholesterol level.
- Avoid processed foods.
- Reduce consuming fast foods as they increase your cholesterol level.
- Minimize the consumption of sugar because high levels of sugar can lead to diabetes and high blood sugar.
Here is the complete diet for cardiac disease that one should follow.
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Keep Your Weight in Check
Do you know that being overweight can highly increase your risk of heart disease? The extra weight puts a lot of pressure on your heart. But we can reduce this just by following some simple ways. We have mentioned below some simple Ways to Maintain a Healthy Weight:
- While eating, eat slowly to recognize when you are full.
- Drink more water. Sometimes, thirst feels like hunger.
- Avoid mindless snacking in front of the TV.
- Move your body (we’ll talk more about exercise next!).
- Losing just 5-10% of your body weight can already lower your heart disease risk.
Here is the diet for weight loss that one can follow.
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Stay Physically Active
Your heart is a muscle that needs exercise to stay strong. You do not have to hit the gym for hours. Even thirty minutes of movement a day is enough to keep your heart happy. There are many ways to Stay Active:
- Take a brisk walk in the morning or evening.
- Dance to your favorite songs at home!
- Use stairs instead of elevators.
- Yoga and stretching can help you to maintain posture.
- If you love a specific sport or activity, do more of it! The key is to stay consistent.
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Quit Smoking
Smoking is very injurious to health! Smoking can damage your heart and lungs the most. It comes with a lot of side effects. It raises your blood pressure and degenerates the cells of your lungs. It can even lead to many respiratory problems related to the lungs. Quitting smoking is a really tough challenge! But quitting smoke can be the best decision in the long run. If you don’t smoke now then it is better to never start. Passive smoking can also affect your health, so avoid passive smoking as well.
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Proper stress management
Stress sounds like a normal thing but it acts as a poison for your heart. Yes, we know life is stressful for everyone but stress management is very important to lead a healthy life. Why? It causes high blood pressure and increases inflammation. Overstress can even lead to heart attacks sometimes. So channeling your stress into something should be your priority to maintain a healthy life. What you can do to avoid or reduce stress is mentioned below
- When you feel overwhelmed when you are feeling very stressed try to take long and deep breaths.
- Try to talk to your friends and family to relieve the stress.
- Sometimes listening to calm and soft music can also help reduce stress
- If you can manage to take 5 minutes in a day for yoga or meditation, it can give you positive effects.
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Watch Your Blood Pressure
High blood pressure generally has no symptoms but can seriously damage your heart over time. Checking your blood pressure from time to time is important to avoid high blood pressure. Check out the ways to Keep Blood Pressure in Check:
- Eat less salt (avoid too much-packaged food).
- Stay active—exercise naturally lowers blood pressure.
- Get regular check-ups.
- Patients should take medicines as advised by the doctor.
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Keep an Eye on Cholesterol
Too much cholesterol is not good for your heart! A high amount of cholesterol results in the narrowing of arteries. It reduces the flow of blood to the heart and causes heart diseases. Consult a good dietitian in Mumbai who can assist you to get proper diet plan. Good cholesterol helps to clean your clogged arteries. When cholesterol levels are not in balance it causes many types of heart diseases. It is all about balance. you can improve your cholesterol levels by following some small tips
- Try to eat foods like oats, beans, and apples which are rich in fiber.
- Try to healthy food over fast foods.
- Exercise to increase the good cholesterol.
- Avoid milk products and red meat as much as possible.
- Keep track of your cholesterol level once a year.
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Maintaining Blood Sugar
Do you know how high blood sugar can affect you? High blood sugar can lead to diabetes and heart. It damages your blood vessels which increases the chance of heart attacks. To keep your blood sugar stable
- Try to eat balanced meals.
- You should try to cut off sugar in tea and coffee.
- Exercise helps you regulate the insulin level.
- Diabetes patients should take medicine as prescribed by their doctor.
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Avoid Consuming Alcohol
Drinking a little level of alcohol does not affect your body. But drinking too much can be very harmful to your body! It leads to
- High blood pressure
- Weight gain
- Causes irregular heartbeats
- Affects kidneys
- Affects liver
So to maintain a healthy lifestyle it is important to have drinking habits within proper limits. If you do not drink then do not start now.
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Get Enough Sleep
We often do not consider sleep as an important fact. Do you know how important it is to get proper sleep? To maintain a healthy lifestyle you must get enough sleep. If you do not get enough sleep it raises your blood pressure. It also increases stress and anxiety. We already know how stress can affect our daily lifestyle. So to avoid these you should try to get proper sleep. What you can do to get proper sleep? We can take the following steps to ensure we get proper sleep.
- Maintain a proper sleep schedule.
- Limit your screen time, especially before sleeping.
- Get at least eight hours of quality sleep every night.
We can not change our habits overnight. But what can we do is take a small step at a time. Start changing your lifestyle and habits little by little it can give you greater results. Start focusing on our lifestyle today so that we can live a healthy and long life in the future.