A human Heart works throughout your life to keep you alive. One must be careful with something that owes you a life.
Our daily habits such as drugs, smoking, stress, grinding routines make are heart fragile and can cause major heart diseases. Small changes in daily routine and habits can make a lot of difference to your fragile heart and can make it healthy again.
Here are few simple things to do in life that keeps your heart Healthy:
Eat a Heart Healthy Diet
A healthy diet is recommended not just for a healthy heart but also to keep in check other major diseases. Use Small plates and bowls while eating. This helps in controlling your portion of food intake.
Take low calorie and nutrient rich food such as fruits and green veggies. They are good sources of Vitamins and minerals and rich in dietary fibre.
Your dietary pattern may include 2 greens, 3 fruits, good fats, limited saturated fats and has no trans-fat.
Be physically Active Daily
Keep a check on your physical activities. Don’t slouch on the couch for long hours. You need at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical exercise (like a brisk walk) or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise (like jogging, running) or combination for both every week.
Keep your BP in check
High BP is one of the major risk factors causing Heart Diseases. It is responsible for 57% of all stroke deaths and 24% of all heart diseases death in India. So always keep your blood pressure in check by losing some extra pound, watching your waistline, exercise regularly, eat healthily, eat limited, limit intake of salt and alcohol.
Control Sugar level
Sugar is the cause of diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart diseases. Extra sugar in the body gets stored as fat. This excess fat is harmful to the heart and body. Swap your diet. How?
Swap Biscuits with nuts and vegetable sticks,
Sugary breakfast cereal with porridge or oats,
Ice creams with yoghurt and fresh fruits,
Aerated drinks/ smoothies with water, milk, tea or coffee (without sugar).
Control cholesterol
High cholesterol causes heart strokes and vascular diseases. High level of Cholesterol is what causes blockage in the heart. To control Cholesterol, one has to limit the intake of Alcohol, exercise regularly, leave smoking, lose excess fat, and eat more of green vegetables.
Maintain ideal weight
A person’s body is the sum of fat, muscles, bones, blood and water. Being overweight or underweight is harmful to the heart. To maintain the ideal weight, chose right diet and the right time to eat that diet. A bonus would be a regular exercise, which would help in keeping high blood pressure, diabetes and heart diseases away.
Avoid stress and relax daily
Stress adds to the risk factors of cardiovascular diseases in a lot of cases. Sleeping less or sleeping more both is harmful. Ideally, it is important to sleep for 7-8 hours daily. To avoid stress one can also spend quality time with family and friends or do yoga and meditation.
Limit the alcohol and do not smoke
Nicotine in Cigarettes stimulates your body to produce adrenaline, which raises high blood pressure and makes your heart work harder. Smoking damages the lining of the blood vessels which in turn leads to cholesterol build up. This can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Be happy
Don’t just LOLs and ROFL on chats, social media or emails, laugh out loud, smile more; According to research laughing and smiling can lower the stress hormones, decrease inflammation in your arteries, and raise the level of High-Density lipoprotein (HDL), which is known as good cholesterol.
To be happy you may choose to watch a comedy movie or a show, or dance, listen to music, do the knitting, go fishing, adopt a pet or do anything that makes you happy.
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