Steps to Follow for a Life Free of Heart Disease

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – Heart disease affects more than 9 million adults in the United States and is the main cause of death, killing more people than all cancers combined. However, many researches show that one can prevent having heart disease if one exercises regularly, has a healthy diet and weight, and an overall healthy lifestyle.

As mentioned before, the key to a healthy heart is a healthy lifestyle. Therefore, if people need to take better care of themselves and their heart health, they must make some changes. This might come as a challenge, but there are a few steps that need to be followed which can guarantee they will keep you away from heart disease.

First of all, people show know what are their risks to develop heart disease. There are a few risk factors that one cannot change, for example age or the history of heart disease in their family. However, there are other risk factors that can be influenced.

One may take control of their high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, lack of physical activity, high cholesterol, and smoking. Make sure you check the levels of this factors at a younger age, so that you can keep them under control.

Then, you should know your numbers. What are these? These are the key elements essential to your heart’s health that everyone should know. You must keep these elements within the healthy range and keep them under constant observation and the heart disease risk is greatly reduced.

These numbers are: total cholesterol, good cholesterol (HDL), blood pressure, blood sugar, and body mass index (BMI).

The next step is to maintain a healthy diet, low in total and saturated fats, which are known for raising the cholesterol levels. Also, eat food rich in nutrients, such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grain bread. Also, eat fish at least twice a week and reduce the consumption of sodium and alcohol.

Keep an active lifestyle and try to exercise regularly. The goal would be to exercise moderately for 30 minutes per day, but any kind of physical activity is good for the heart. Also, this will help you keep your weight under control, which is also good for your heart’s health.

In the end, do not neglect your resting hours and try to lower stress factors in your life as much as possible. Nothing compares to enjoying your life and being joyful about every little thing that happens. Probably, this might be one of the most important factors that you can control so that you can make sure heart disease does not affect you.