Saturday, August 4, 2012

Have A Healthy Heart And Live Long

According to a study, heart disease is the number one killer-disease of both and men. Especially, heart ailments affect people from developed countries more than those who live in other countries. This means that it is the lifestyle of the people of these developed countries that contributes heavily for this affliction.

A lot of research has been taking place in the recent years to find out the causes as well as the preventive measures that people can take to protect themselves from this dreadful disease. If you want to have a healthy heart and safeguard yourself from heart ailments, you should take the following few steps. These are mainly lifestyle changes and if you make these changes, they will go a long way in keeping you protected from heart ailments.

- You should first make drastic changes in your dietary habits. If you are fond of oily and spicy items and processed and junk foods, you must stop eating these foods forthwith. Instead, you should develop the habit of eating a lot of fiber foods and wholesome grains. The wrong foods you have been consuming all these days may have increased your BMI or Body Mass Index. You should ensure to maintain your BMI below 30. For calculating your BMI, you should divide your weight in Kilograms by the square of your height in meters. If your BMI is above 34, you are considered obese and it may damage your heart quite seriously. If you lead a lazy and sedentary lifestyle, it is all the more dangerous.

- The second factor that may contribute to your proneness to heart ailments is lack of exercises. Though weight training exercises may help you in building muscles and having a good physique, you should do cardiovascular exercises also to keep your heart healthy. But, cardiovascular exercises may nullify the muscle-building effects of weight training exercises. So, you should do both types of exercises in the right proportion to get the best of both worlds. If you are above 45 or 50, you should consult your doctor before doing rigorous weight training exercises. It is better you focus on cardiovascular exercises like brisk walking, light jogging, etc. if you are above 45.

- It is a strict "no" to smoking if you want to keep your heart healthy. Your heart ages faster if you are a smoker. Apart from causing heart ailments, smoking may cause many other diseases such as cancer, lung problems and so on.

- You should closely be monitoring your cholesterol levels. Your Low Density Lipoprotein should be low and your High Density Lipoprotein should be high. In addition to these two factors, you should maintain the levels of Triglycerides also low. If you keep them at the right levels, you need not fear about heart diseases at all.

- High blood pressure can be very dangerous and it may cause heart attacks. So, those who have this problem should take the right treatment and keep their blood pressure at the right levels.


- Stress management is very much necessary for preventing heart ailments. In the present-day world, a number of factors cause stress in our lives. Though you can not control the external circumstances, you can control their effects on you. By learning to manage your stress, you can prevent their bad effects on your heart. You can learn meditation, breathing exercises, yoga, etc. to manage your stress levels.

- High blood sugar can also cause heart ailments. Since high blood sugar leads to problems in the body metabolism, it increases the susceptibility to heart diseases. So, if you are diabetic, you should take suitable medications to keep the blood sugar at the right levels. You should make it a point to be active and this will help in lowering the sugar levels in the blood. The best way is to go for long walks every day because walking can effectively bring down the blood sugar levels.

If you follow these steps religiously, you can certainly succeed in having a healthy heart.

Raman Kuppuswamy writes useful and interesting articles on various topics. You may kindly visit http://dreamdamodar.hubpages.com/ and read his other articles.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Raman_Kuppuswamy

No comments:

Post a Comment