Healthy Heart: 5 Lifestyle Changes You Need To Know!

Lifestyle is one of the best defences against heart disease. All you need to do to maintain good heart health is to just make simple but significant changes to your lifestyle. By doing so, you end up minimising the risk factors associated with heart disease such as coronary artery disease.

The lifestyle changes that you must make for a healthy heart are:

1. Be physically active - Research by Harvard University shows that watching television for 2 hours a day can increase your chances of developing heart disease by 15%. But if you exercise or indulge in some kind of physical activity for about 30 minutes every day, you can significantly improve the health of your heart as any kind of physical activity improves your blood circulation as well as blood pressure.

2. Maintain a healthy body weight - Having a low body weight or a high one can also put you at risk of getting heart disease. For a good heart health, you need to protect it from fatigue and damage. By keeping your weight at an optimum level, your blood circulation, as well as body fluids, end up working efficiently, protecting your heart from unnecessary strain.

3. Have a balanced diet - It is important that you eat foods that are high in fiber and nutrients, but low in calories in order to stay healthy. Consumption of high cholesterol foods like processed meats, desserts, etc. often lead to heart problems. But foods like tuna or salmon, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and lean proteins such as chicken and fish in your diet can reduce your risk of developing heart disease.

4. Manage stress - Stress is another factor that causes you to have poor heart health. To prevent the damaging effect that stress can have on your heart, exercising is what you should do. This is because when you exercise, you release endorphins (brain chemicals that trigger a feel-good feeling in your body), which help in improving your physical and mental makeup. Additionally, exercising has also been found to reduce your chances of dying from a heart attack.

5. Quit smoking - Research reveals that smoking increases your chance of getting heart disease by about 2 - 4 times. As it can damage the lining of the arteries, which leads to build up of atheroma, and narrows the artery. This eventually can lead to heart attack or stroke. Smoking further reduces the level of oxygen in your blood, due the presence of carbon monoxide, that means  your heart has to pump harder to supply the body with the oxygen it needs. If you wish to discuss about any specific problem, you can consult a cardiologist.