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With a new year comes a new chance to take care of yourself for the year ahead. Your heart is one of the most important things that you can take care of. After all, it’s your heart that keeps your body working. So, here are some ways that you can take good care of your heart in 2021.
Eat Properly
What you eat has a lot of impact on your heart health, so make sure you are taking care to eat foods that are good for your heart. Firstly, control your portion sizes, as how much you eat is just as important as what you eat. Have smaller portions of foods that are high calorie and high sodium foods and larger portions of low calorie and nutrient-rich foods.
Limiting your salt intake is also important as too much salt can is bad for your heart. An adult should only have a maximum of 6g – around one teaspoon – of salt per day. Any more than that and you risk raising your blood pressure. High blood pressure increases your risk of developing coronary heart disease.
Exercise Regularly
Regular exercise is necessary for optimal heart health. There are different types of exercise that are good for your heart for various reasons.
Aerobic exercise is good for lowering your blood pressure and heart rate. By improving your overall aerobic fitness, you improve cardiac output.
Resistance training can help reduce fat and create leaner muscles mass which is helpful for those carrying a bit of extra weight as excess weight as this can lead to heart disease.
Stretching, flexibility, and balance exercises don’t directly contribute to heart health but are key in maintaining aerobic and resistance exercises which are directly related to heart health.
Take Medical Precautions
If you’re keen on keeping your heart in good condition, or if you know you or your family are prone to heart conditions, then it is important that you take medical precautions. Many cardiac disorders, such as arrhythmias, congenital heart disease, and high blood cholesterol, can be inherited.
There are a lot of different medical tests that you can undergo to test for heart conditions, two of the most common being the angiogram and echocardiogram.
Both of these tests are used to test for various conditions, such as heart attacks, angina and heart disease amongst others. If you think you could be at risk of any heart conditions, then you should get tested as soon as possible.
Check Your Family Tree
As previously mentioned, there are several common heart conditions that are inherited through family trees. Those with inherited heart conditions can often have no symptoms, while other people who do develop symptoms can experience things such as dizzy spells, palpitations, blackouts and shortness of breath.
Unfortunately, unless you’re aware of heart conditions in your family history, many people’s first sign of something being wrong is a sudden death in the family that seems to have no obvious cause. This is known as sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS).
If you have a family member who has been diagnosed with an inherited heart condition, your doctor may suggest that you undergo tests such as an ECG or echocardiogram.
Quit Bad Habits
Smoking and drinking are bad for your health in any case. However, they can have a particularly bad impact on your heart.
Quitting smoking will reduce your risk of heart and circulatory diseases, even if you have been a lifelong smoker. To give you an idea of how good quitting can be for you:
- 20 minutes after you quit your blood pressure level and heart rate will return to normal.
- 2-3 days later, your sense of taste and smell have improved.
- 2-12 weeks later, you will find exercising easier, and your breathing improved
- 1 year later your risk of having a heart attack is 50% lower than a smoker’s
Drinking alcohol can also have negative effects on your heart health. So, even if you don’t stop drinking altogether, you should at least cut down on the amount you drink. Alcohol raises your blood pressure and weight which can increase your risk of suffering a heart attack or a stroke or developing cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes.
Alcohol is a depressant and slows down your brain’s control of the body, and drinking large amounts of it at one time can slow your heart rate and breathing to dangerous levels. In general, you should drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week and should have alcohol free days every week.
Regardless of how young or fit and healthy you are, it is never too soon to start looking after your heart health. Getting on a proper diet and exercise plan when you are younger will allow you to keep your heart in the best shape it can be and will make these healthy habits easier to follow as you age. If you think you might have any form of heart condition, then it is vital that you get tested so that you can get it under control as soon as possible.
(Chris Smith is a writer and blogger. Over his career, he has written for a number of publications, including The Guardian, The Telegraph, GoDaddy and The Huffington Post. He writes about sport and finance on his website, Spend It Like Beckham.)
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