How To Keep Heart Healthy?

I’m healthy, I’m prone to no disease, no ailment, no heart attack, no cardiac arrest…..blah blah blah……We used to hear many blabbering like this, is it true? No it’s not. Heart attack is a leading killer nowadays. Unless otherwise diagnosed, nobody could predict on who is prone to it and who is not! This is a life-saving article with approximately 10,000 characters. If you’re short of time, bookmark this page to be read later.

Bacteria and viruses keep on struggling to outweigh our immune system and to creep into our body by any means. Even if a minor compromise is made by our immunity, it may result in fever, swelling etc., leading to constriction of blood vessels or say even precipitation of blood at some points inside the vessels. Such precipitations clog microscopic blood vessels resulting in heart attacks or strokes.

For the immune system to work efficiently and for you to stay healthy with a healthy heart, find below a few heart health tips that could easily be adapted to live healthy.

Floss your teeth

Bleeding gums, swollen gums, tooth decay etc., require your immediate attention as the inflammation may lead to blood vessel constriction, i.e., avoiding dental diseases prevents inflammation of the arteries, which helps you reduce the chances of a heart disease. Many are not aware of the fact that oral hygiene is the key factor to prevent many illnesses. An unhygienic oral cavity is a Pandora’s Box of many illnesses.

Exercise regularly

Among two lions of the same age and origin (say twins), the one at jungle with regular hunt out for prey will be much healthier than its counterpart at the zoo enjoying a lazy lifestyle, provide whatever medical attention to the latter. This theory applies to us too. Regular exercise keeps one healthy and walking half-an-hour a day decreases the risk of having a heart attack by about 30 percent. Prefer doing it early morning with an empty stomach as it helps lowering the body fat since the energy required will be obtained by burning that excess fat stored in your body, while an evening walk will only abstract energy from whatever you’ve eaten during the day. If you succeed walking daily, you can succeed at doing other things to improve health. Skip that and you start compromising health in other ways too.

Reduce weight

A BMI of 20-26 is desirable for middle aged adults while a BMI of more than 30 indicates obesity.  Hence lose weight, try to contain your BMI within 30.  A waist-hip ratio of 0.8 or lesser for women and 1 or lesser for men is considered the ideal shape. The fat that accumulates especially around the waist is not only a sign of danger for your shape but also for your health. Why is it a potential danger? Here is a relative theory behind that: The fat that gets accumulated there feeds the kidney, liver and other vital organs. When you gain weight, you accumulate fat inside the comparatively rigid kidney capsule too. This fat pushes the kidney thereby the kidney needing more blood pressure to drive blood through as it’s getting jammed by the fat. So it releases hormones that cause vasoconstriction thereby increased blood pressure. If you discard a little of that omentum fat which can be achieved by just a few pounds of weight loss, your blood pressure recedes down really fast. Cutting back on salt (sodium chloride) may help, but for some people reducing sugar and saturated fat in the diet may help even more.

Once you’re above 40s, monitor your blood pressure regularly. A blood pressure level of 140/90 mmHg or higher is considered high while any reading above 120/80 mmHg is considered as prehypertension level. High blood pressure makes the heart work extra hard and hardens artery walls, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke. Hence high blood pressure is a silent killer because there are no symptoms and if lifestyle changes are not bringing your blood pressure within the normal range then, medications may be needed. So if you’re above 40s, it’s a must to keep an eye on your blood pressure levels and contain it through regular doctor visits, physical exercise, diet and medications if any needed.

Eat healthy

Fat rich food is essentially a threat to heart. Similarly starch rich potato, white bread etc., increase blood sugar level, again a potential threat for heart. Saturated fat and trans fats (partially hydrogenated oils) lead to inflammation in the arteries.

To be more informative, let’s discuss the topic of fats a little bit elaborated. Fats and oils are either saturated or unsaturated; unsaturated fats can be either monounsaturated or polyunsaturated. Saturated fats, which mainly come from animal sources, increase cholesterol levels. Tropical oils such as coconut and palm are two non-animal examples of saturated fat. Hydrogenated oils such as margarine and vegetable shortening are saturated fats that have been chemically transformed from their normal liquid state into solids. During the hydrogenation procedure, extra hydrogen atoms are pumped into unsaturated fat. This creates trans fatty acids, the most unhealthy type of fat found to be the number one cause of heart disease.

While monounsaturated fats are known to help reduce the levels of (bad) LDL cholesterol (low density lipoprotein) without lowering the good HDL cholesterol (high density lipoprotein), polyunsaturated fats, made up of omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids are considered relatively healthy. The chart below compares the dietary fats so that you can be aware of what you consume.

NAME OF FAT/OIL	SATURATED	POLYUNSATURATED		MONO UNSATURATED
		Linoleic Acid (Omega 6)	Alpha-Linolenic Acid (Omega 3)
Canola	7	22	10	61
Hempseed	8	55	25	12
Flaxseed	10	17	55	18
Safflower	10	76	trace	14
Sunflower	12	71	1	16
Corn	13	57	1	29
Olive	15	9	1	75
Soybean	15	54	8	23
Peanut	19	33	trace	48
Cottonseed	27	54	trace	19
Lard	43	9	1	47
Beef Tallow	48	2	1	49
Palm	51	10	trace	39
Butterfat	68	3	1	28
Coconut	91	2	0	7

The oils/fats have been listed in order of increasing bad fat (saturated fat) content.

Recent researches have shown that including oils rich in omega-3 in your diet reduces the risk of stroke, heart attack and heart disease. Researches further indicate that we consume a dangerously insufficient amount of omega-3 while the intake of omega-6, another fat found in corn, soy, sunflower and other oils, is far too high. The ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 should be 1:1, but our typical ratio ranges from 20:1 to 50:1! Fish, fish oil and cod liver oil are one of the best sources for essential omega-3, but fish of all varieties from all water sources nowadays are showing dangerously high levels of the tasteless but highly toxic metal, mercury. So make sure that the fish you are consuming is free of toxins such as mercury and lead as is the case with cod liver oil and fish oil.

So moms, the health of your entire family is in your hands. Your cooking should be a composite of many oils with choices ranging from corn, canola, safflower, sunflower, almond, grape seed, coconut, palm, peanut, pumpkin seed, soybean, sesame, olive or any other oil of your choice (even splurge with truffle oil). Oils of evening primrose, flax, black currant, hemp, borage and wheat germ can be used as condiments and should never be heated to avoid losing the nutritional contents. So let it be any oil of your choice while the message is that there shouldn’t be prolonged usage of any particular oil while a rotation at regular intervals is advised to have a balanced nutrition as well as to be dear to your heart and ensure that the per capita consumption is contained within four teaspoons a day or 500 ml (half a liter) a month.

Return to nature; befriend raw fruits and fresh green vegetables. Fruits and vegetables contain very little potassium chloride, but they are rich sources of potassium citrate and other potassium salts. Potassium chloride has an antagonist function to that of sodium chloride (common salt) i.e., potassium chloride lowers the blood pressure levels. Potassium citrate found rich in fruits and vegetables is a natural alternative for potassium chloride. Fruits come with a lot of fiber, means less calorie and digestion friendly but make sure you wash fresh produce carefully and thoroughly. If you’re a diabetic, consult with your physician on which fruits that you can rely on. Prevent/manage diabetes as the chances of people with diabetes dying from heart disease or stroke are more according to American Diabetes Association (ADA). Prolonged diabetics are prone to sudden deaths with heart attacks may be because they lose sensitivity to pain with prolonged diabetes.

Quit smoking

Smoking makes our body immunocompromised to several organisms. Along with risk of lung cancer and other diseases, the mixture of tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke increases the risk of the arteries getting hardened, which restricts blood flow to the heart. Smokers have more than twice the risk of having a heart attack as nonsmokers and smoking is the biggest risk factor for sudden cardiac death. Smokers who have a heart attack are more likely to die than nonsmokers who have a heart attack. So if you are a smoker, quit immediately. After quitting, to lessen the ill effects already procured, have ten tablespoons of tomato juice a week as researches have proved that tomato juice has the curing element for emphysema, one of the ill effects of smoking. Tomato juice also has blood pressure lowering salt potassium.

Reduce stress

Stress is a normal part of life but if left unmanaged, can lead to emotional, psychological or even physical problems, including coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, chest pain or even irregular heart beats. Though researchers so far are unable to establish a definite theory of connection between stress and heart disease, stress speeds up heart rate and people with heart disease are more likely to have a heart attack during times of stress. In order to cope with stress, you need to relax and there are numerous methods that can be used to relax including deep breathing, listening favorite music or even a well balanced food can fight stress.

Little of alcohol

Finally the interesting part, hehehe. A little bit of alcohol daily is good for arteries as researches indicate that teetotalers are more prone to heart attacks than those who drink a little daily, may be there’s an antiinflammatory effect or so with drinks. So a glass of wine or beer a day is friendly to the heart. It doesn’t mean to advocate for what you do on the weekends, gulping seven pitchers on a single stretch! People who tend to drink a lot have little heart disease but have other troubles like liver disorders and cancer!!!

Hope the contents above were interesting enough for you to abide and live healthy while an awareness of how the heart attack would be or how to come to a conclusion that you are having a heart attack will even be more important in saving precious lives.

Symptoms of heart attack

These include chest discomfort, chest pain, discomfort in the arm(s), left axilla, back, neck, jaw, or stomach, shortness of breath, breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea, and lightheadedness or even defecation of loose stool along with these symptoms. Most heart attacks don’t involve someone grabbing the chest and dropping to the floor as you might have seen in the movies/TV shows. Moreover heart attack symptoms for men can be different than symptoms for women. The earlier you come to a conclusion, the safer you are as people typically wait two hours or more before seeking emergency care for heart attack symptoms because they are either unaware/uncertain about the symptoms or are concerned that it might be a false alarm and clot-busting medications and other effective treatments that restore blood flow and save heart muscle are most effective in the first hour following a heart attack.

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