Giacomo Bagnara

 

7 Ways to Improve Your Heart Health

By  Nina Agrawal

 

If you’re among the millions of Americans who made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, exercise or eat better, here’s one more reason to stick with it: Doing so can protect your heart.

Heart disease is the  leading cause of death  in the United States. And habits like smoking, poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle can lay the groundwork for disease long before symptoms appear. These habits “won’t kill you the next day,” but they may dictate how well you live in the last decades of your life, said Dr Kyla Lara-Breitinger, a cardiologist and an assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

“If you say you’re going to be hiking in the Dolomites at your retirement, what are you doing now to prepare?” she said.

First, take stock of where you are.

Doctors can use your blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels to  predict your risk for heart disease  and suggest possible treatments. So start by visiting your primary care physician to get your numbers checked, said Dr Sadiya Khan, a preventive cardiologist at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

A visit with your primary care doctor also offers an opportunity to talk about your health goals. You can discuss what might be getting in the way of meeting them — and map out a path for change.

“It can feel overwhelming if you’re trying to do all of it at once,” Dr Khan said. But you can talk to your doctor about starting with what’s easiest, or what changes would make the biggest difference.

If you smoke, try to quit.

Smoking is responsible for about  one-third of all deaths related to heart disease , according to the American Heart Association. Smoking causes inflammation, increases plaque buildup and makes it more likely that plaque will rupture and form blood clots, which can lead to a heart attack or stroke. E-cigarettes and vape pens also  contain nicotine  and other substances harmful to heart health.

Evidence suggests that a combination of medication and counseling is one of the most effective ways to help smokers quit. The  North American Quitline Consortium  can help you find resources in your state.

Don’t underestimate the power of stairs.

Dr Khan’s top tip for patients, after quitting smoking, is to see how many flights of stairs they can climb without getting winded — and then start building on that.

Regular exercise strengthens the heart muscle and makes the body more efficient at pulling oxygen out of the blood. It also brings down blood pressure and glucose levels and helps reduce the excess body fat that can lead to insulin resistance and other metabolic disorders.

The American Heart Association recommends that adults get 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week, but not everyone has 30 minutes each day to hop on a treadmill or do high-intensity training, Dr Lara-Breitinger said. That’s where small goals and  short bursts of exercise  can come in.

If you work from home, for example, try taking breaks between meetings to do lunges or run up a flight of stairs. When they’re sitting down to look at patient scans, Dr Lara-Breitinger and her staff try to stand up and do 20 reps of something — push-ups, squats or lunges — every hour if they can.

For some people, tracking steps, calories and blood glucose with digital devices can be “extremely motivating,” Dr Khan said, helping them monitor progress and feel a sense of achievement upon hitting a particular goal.

Stick to the grocery store’s perimeter.

Doctors recommend adopting a plant-based diet with lots of whole grains, lean protein and fresh fruits and vegetables, which are typically found in the outer aisles of a grocery store. The  DASH diet  has been shown to be particularly effective for people with high blood pressure, and decades of research supports the  health benefits of the Mediterranean diet . Both emphasize unsaturated fats, like those found in olive oil and nuts, rather than the saturated fats typically found in foods like red meat. And both diets can help reduce your LDL, or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, the “bad” kind that can lead to plaque formation in the arteries.

If you eat a lot of red meat right now, start by replacing a few dinners each week with a plant-based option or lean poultry or fish, Dr Lara-Breitinger said.

Replacing  ultra-processed foods  — packaged goods often found in the middle aisles of the grocery store — with less processed options may also reduce the likelihood of  developing a metabolic condition like obesity or diabetes