If you’re reading this article, you may be just proactively interested in health, or you may have reasons to want to learn how to improve your heart health. Not all of us are inherently intrigued by health, exercise, and nutrition advice. For those looking for tips on improving heart health because you realize you need to, this article will share not just eight heart health tips but some interesting trivia about the heart scattered in between.
Take a Low-Dose Aspirin If Your Doctor Recommends It
If you have a family history of either heart attack or stroke, you’ll know that both of these are caused by blood clots. Taking a low-dose aspirin every day will cost you about a penny a day but could prevent a life-altering or ending event in your life.
Heart Fact: Monday is when most heart attacks happen.
Get Cardio Every Day.
Some sources of heart health advice will tell you to get cardiovascular exercise three or four times a week. Make it easier on yourself and more enjoyable. Get regular exercise that causes your heart to pound just a little bit harder every day. Mix cardiovascular activities with additional workouts, as recommended by John Hopkins, for how to strengthen your heart.
You don’t have to do raging cardio unless that’s your bag. What are cardiovascular exercise examples? Try taking the stairs, walking for 20-30 minutes daily, dancing for 15 minutes in the morning, swimming, or whatever makes your heart happy. Literally, just do it—every day.
Heart Fact: The average human’s heart as an adult is the size of a fist.
Keep Your Weight in Check
Higher body weights cause high blood pressure. Being overweight is also linked to high cholesterol.
Heart Fact: Unlike fat cells, which can keep growing but never go away, the heart cells stop dividing at adulthood, so heart cancer is extremely rare.
Know Whether You Are a “Pear” or An “apple,”
This is important especially if you are a woman or diabetic. Many sources explain that holding excess body weight around your core (an apple shape) vs. around the hips (pear-shaped) can be a key indicator of potential heart issues.
Heart Fact: Eating berries often can lower several risk factors for heart disease.
Consume Resveratrol-Rich Wine and Other Heart-Healthy Foods
As with many health issues, what we put into our bodies affects how they hold up. The good news is that there are some fabulous items included in a heart disease diet.
What is a heart-healthy diet? You may be happy to learn that both red wine (which contains heart-friendly resveratrol) and chocolate (especially dark chocolate, which is higher in flavonoids associated with a lower risk of heart disease) are on the menu. And while a healthy heart diet can include vegetarian staples like seitan, tempeh, and tofu, it also can incorporate lean cuts of beef and pork.
Heart Fact: While it may seem that half the world has gone “gluten-free,” many are learning to enjoy and eat seitan, which is made up of gluten!
Understand Numbers
You may know that cholesterol matters, but take a moment to internalize the difference between LDL and HDL (the good cholesterol), as well as learn what triglycerides are. Then, pay attention when your blood is drawn to track the results over time. While some of the results are hereditary (yes, even skinny people can have high cholesterol), it’s something you have some control over.
Heart Fact: For men, an active sex life may cut your risk of dying from heart disease in half. In fact, erectile dysfunction could be an early warning of a heart attack down the road.
Consider a Heart-Healthy Supplement If You Have High Blood Pressure
Many health advisors recommend taking natural supplements to help lower blood pressure, such as folic acid, magnesium, potassium, CoQ10, and garlic, for example.
Heart Fact: Garlic ranks high in foods that are good for your heart. Garlic helps prevent atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries. But it also can fight colorectal cancer and Lyme disease.
Investigate Ayurvedic Medicine for Cardiac Support
Ayurvedic medicine is among the most time-honored bodies of healing knowledge. systems. This holistic medicine tradition originated in India over 3,000 years ago. Western science is now embracing Ayurvedic approaches as serious solutions for cardiac disease prevention and treatment.
Rather than seeking these factors as individual supplements, it’s easier to take a supplement like Revive’s Blood Pressure supplement. Besides having all five ingredients recommended as supplements above, it includes other herbs, vitamins, and natural compounds for heart health.
Some of the compounds that make this particular supplement unique are respected and used in Ayurvedic medicine, like arjuna (included in the proprietary formula Rejuna™), Shankhpushpi, and Nattokinase. Another proprietary formulation is Suntheanine®, a patented version of the amino acid L-theanine, often used for blood pressure control.
Heart Fact: As noted by WebMD, Indian snakeroot is another Ayurvedic herb used for cardiovascular health. If you have hypertension, you’ll want to know how to reduce your heart rate. This herb, which is also included in Revive’s supplement, reduces high blood pressure.
Takeaway
Like the brain, the heart is such a life-critical organ; it’s smart to take good preventive care of it. If you’re at risk of heart disease through hereditary factors or behavioral ones, it’s always advisable to seek medical advice before embarking on a radical dietary change or other methods of treatment, especially if you’re taking any prescription medications.
Common sense, your mother, and any doctor will tell you that you’ll want to combine exercise with supplements and diet. You can learn how to increase heart rate (pulse) intentionally through monitoring and a little push, so you won’t have to fight so hard to lower your blood pressure with medicine and more drastic measures later.