Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and around the world. Follow these seven tips on preventing heart failure.
There are many factors that affect your risk of heart disease, including diet habits, family history, age, and more. While you can’t change every risk factor, the following tips explore what you can do to prevent heart failure.
1. Smoking and Tobacco
Whether it’s smoking tobacco or being exposed to secondhand smoke, it’s best to avoid these if you want to protect your heart. Tobacco products have chemicals that can damage your heart and blood vessels, leading to heart disease and heart failure. On the bright side, your risk of heart disease drops as soon as the day after you stop smoking.
2. Physical Activity
By being physically active on a daily basis, you can lower your risk of heart disease along with other conditions. Aim to get at least 150 minutes of moderate cardio exercise per week or 75 minutes of weekly vigorous activity. However, if you are not usually active, you can start gradually as shorter bouts of activity can still benefit you.
3. Heart-Healthy Diet
Protect your heart by eating heart-healthy foods like vegetables, fruits, beans, legumes, lean meats, fish, whole grains, and more. If you’re looking for healthy eating plans, consider the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet and the Mediterranean diet. Furthermore, you’ll want to limit your intake of certain products such as salt, sugar, processed carbohydrates, alcohol, and saturated fats.
4. Healthy Weight
Being overweight can increase your risk of heart disease as well as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. Calculate your body mass index (BMI) and if it’s 25 or higher, you have a higher risk of heart disease. Nevertheless, even losing a small amount of weight can help decrease your triglyceride levels, glucose levels, and diabetes risk.
5. Quality Sleep
Getting good, quality sleep is essential if you want to decrease your risk of obesity, hypertension, heart attack, and diabetes. Set a healthy sleep schedule by making sure you get at least seven hours of sleep each night. However, if you’re still tired after this, ask your doctor about obstructive sleep apnea as it may be affecting you.
6. Stress Management
Studies suggest there may be a correlation between chronic stress and high blood pressure, a risk factor for heart disease. Stress may lead you to practice unhealthy habits such as overeating, smoking, and binge drinking. However, by finding healthy ways to deal with stress like exercising, you can effectively manage stress and protect your heart.
7. Health Screenings
If you have high blood pressure and/or high cholesterol, your risk of heart disease and heart failure can increase. Make sure you get regular screenings checking blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and type-2 diabetes. In addition, your doctor can tell you how often you should get these screenings and help create a treatment plan if necessary.
The Outlook
If you want to prevent heart failure, it’s important that you make healthy lifestyle changes. These include exercising and eating healthily while also avoiding unhealthy habits like smoking.
Moreover, you can take daily heart supplements like L-arginine Plus to get an extra boost. Try L-arginine Plus along with exercise and dieting to give your heart health the support it needs.