Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death worldwide, and it’s mostly preventable by changing your lifestyle and managing risk factors. A healthy diet and lifestyle are the best recipes to prevent cardiovascular disease. Small changes in your lifestyle can add up and make you live longer and healthier.
Some people manage to overhaul their exercise pattern, diet, and unhealthy habits with ease. The rest of us try to make changes, but don’t always succeed. Instead of undertaking a huge makeover, you might be able to improve your heart’s health with a series of small changes.
At Vascular Care Specialists of Los Angeles, Dr. Mathew Cheung and Dr. Peter Lin discuss simple tips to improve your cardiovascular health. In this post, you will learn 12 steps you can incorporate in your life which will improve your cardiovascular health.
1. Exercise at lease 20 minutes a day
Your heart is a muscle and, as with any muscle, exercise is what strengthens it. You should find an activity you enjoy and can stick with for the long run. Try to do aerobic exercise for at least 20 to 30 minutes a day, three to five times per week. Work your way up to 150 minutes of cardio each week. Get your heart rate up by a simple activity like walking at a brisk pace. Your daily movement doesn’t need to be overly strenuous.
2. Eat heart-healthy foods
A healthy diet consists of eating a variety of foods from all the food groups. The American Heart Association healthy diet emphasizes a variety of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy products, skinless poultry and fish, nuts and legumes and non-tropical vegetable oils. You should limit your intake of saturated and trans-fats, red meats, sweets and sugar-sweetened beverages and refined carbohydrates,”
3. Get plenty of sleep
According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults should get between seven to nine hours of sleep. When you don’t get enough sleep, you tend to feel tired during the day, which may make you in turn more likely to crave non-healthy foods that can lead to weight gain.
4. Maintain a healthy weight
Like your checkbook, your weight is a matter of deposits and withdrawals. You need to exercise regularly and lower portion sizes and calorie intake at meals to lose weight or maintain a healthy size. Simply put, to lose weight you must burn more calories than you consume.
5. Stop drinking your calories.
Cutting out just one sugar-sweetened soda or calorie-laden latte can easily save you 100 or more calories a day. Over a year, that can translate into a 10-pound weight loss.
6. Don’t overeat
Although this advice primarily applies during the holidays, when deaths from heart attacks spike thanks to copious amounts of food and temptation, it’s valid year round. Eating a lot of food at once leads to:
- Blood shifting from the heart to the digestive system
- Faster and irregular heart rhythms, which can lead to heart attack or heart failure
7. Wash your hands often
Scrubbing up with soap and water often during the day is a great way to protect your heart and health. The flu, pneumonia, and other infections can be very hard on the heart.
8. Don’t sit for too long
Some jobs are more sedentary than others. If your job doesn’t keep you active on your feet throughout the day, you should make an intentional effort to get up and move to help maintain a healthy weight. If you don’t have time during the day to exercise, get up and walk around for at least 10 minutes three times during your workday—and always, always take the stairs.
9. Brush your teeth every day – and don’t forget to floss
Inflammation plays a key role in plaque forming in your heart arteries. Good dental hygiene is a good way to a healthy heart.
10. Quit smoking and avoid second-hand smoke
Cigarette smoking is a major risk factor not only for heart disease, but also for stroke, pulmonary disease and cancer. This holds true for cigarettes and vaping products. Quitting smoking is tough. But you know that it’s important to quit, and one of the biggest reasons is that it’s linked to heart disease.
If you currently smoke, chew tobacco, vape, or use other tobacco products, quit right away — your health care team can help. If you don’t smoke now, keep it that way.
11. Don’t stress
There are more than 1,400 biochemical responses to stress, including a rise in blood pressure and a faster heart rate. If you don’t manage your stress, it can create more stress and trap you in a stress cycle. Stress can cause high blood pressure, and is linked to cardiovascular disease. Seek out healthy ways to reduce your stress, such as exercise, yoga, meditation and positive social interaction with friends.
12. Count your blessings
Taking a moment each day to acknowledge the blessings in your life is one way to start tapping into other positive emotions. These have been linked with better health, longer life, and greater well-being, just as their opposites — chronic anger, worry, and hostility — contribute to high blood pressure and heart disease.
Schedule an Appointment Today!
At Vascular Care Specialists of Los Angeles, we strive to provide the best service, care, and results possible. If you have circulation problem related to your arteries or veins and would like to seek consultation with a vascular surgeon, give us a call at 626-275-9566 to schedule an appointment. You can also visit us at www.vcsla.com for more information.
