Tips of avoiding excess pressure on your heart. Let’s live with a healthy heart starting now.
Our heart is the powerhouse of our body continuously pumping oxygen and nutrient-rich blood throughout our body every day. This fist-sized organ beats 100,000 times a day, pumping five to six quarts of blood each minute. The heart plays a crucial role which is why it is important to learn how to take care of it.
Red Alert to Serious Problems
The common beginning to any health problems is hypertension. This happens when excess force stretches the delicate structure inside the arterial walls, causing two forms of injuries:
- Atherosclerosis – This is the most common type of artery disease. This happens when the artery walls thicken due to accumulated amounts of lipids and calcium.
- Aneurysm – This means that there is an abnormal bulge in the wall of an artery. It happens when the pressure of blood passing through has incapacitated part of the artery to bulge outwards. Our human body has trillions of cells, 78 different organs and 60, 000 miles of blood vessels and they are all connected to our heart. This means that a damage blood vessels can cause serious health conditions to any parts of our body such as heart attack (heart), stroke (brain), gangrene (generally affecting the legs), renal failure (kidney) and retinopathy (eyes).
Tips to taking care of our heart
- Belly Fat
Fat accumulated around the belly – visceral fat – is an important indicator of your risk of having a heart attack or stroke. Even people of normal weight who have excess belly fat are at risk. Having excess visceral fat will change the how cholesterol is metabolised and in turn this will cause diabetes and if not taken care off, it will result to obesity.
Protect yourself: We all know the answer to preventing this and that’s exercise. Try to dedicate 30 minutes of your day doing some simple exercises to keep yourself healthy and active.
- Smoking
We’ve heard it everywhere, smoking kills and we’re here to tell you why. The smoke inhaled while smoking can trigger a heart attack even if your arteries and in perfect condition. This is related to the aforementioned symptom called Atherosclerosis. Smoking will narrow your arteries, narrow your blood pressure, increase your risk of atrial fibrillation and cause your blood to thicken and more likely to clot.
Protect yourself: The answer to this is pretty obvious. As soon as you put an end to smoking, your risk of heart disease begins to decline. Within a short period of two weeks, your risk of suffering from a heart attack begins to diminish as well.
- High Blood Pressure
High blood pressure or commonly known as hypertension is threatening to your heart. It stiffens and narrows blood vessels, forcing your heart to put in extra work. Overworking your heart will cause the heart muscle to thicken and overtime, this can lead to atrial fibrillation and to heart failure. Hypertension also encourages atherosclerosis and causing cholesterol and plaque to build up.
Protect yourself: Take time to destress and rewind from your busy schedule. Easy ways to calm your mind and body is enjoy the tranquillity of nature by taking a walk or sitting peacefully on your favourite chair and taking deep breaths.
- Strenuous Exercise
Too much of something is never good. Overexertion when you are exercising will create large pulse of adrenaline that can cause blood pressure and heart rate to palpitate causing a heart attack or even sudden death.
Protect yourself: Regulate your exercise to your limit. Getting fit requires slow and careful progress with your health in mind. Don’t overtax your body!
- Excessive drinking
Excessive drinking can conclude to abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias). The heart palpitations may be a symptom of atrial fibrillation or other abnormal heart rhythms which feels like little flutters or extra beats in your chest. This effect may last a few seconds or sometimes longer. Luckily for most people, this effect will disappear once the alcohol leaves their body. But trust us, don’t take the risk and know your limits.
Protect yourself: Moderate your alcohol intake and take extra precautions especially if you are prone to any heart disease risk factors.
- Prolonged sitting
Our current culture of sitting down all day and lounging all night takes a huge hit on your heart. People who work a sedentary job or even lazing on the couch while watching TV has are possible victims of heart disease, heart attack and stroke.
Protec yourself: A few simple movement can make a difference. Get up for 10 minutes every hour to move around and stretch your legs. Stand up while you’re taking a call or walk to your kitchen to grab your favourite snack from time to time. An optimal about would be 150 minutes of exercise a week.
Your heart is the hardest working muscle in your body. So do it a favour, and lighten it’s load with these few tips.