You can easily set these goals yourself
You don’t have any complaints or ailments? Then your health should be alright, right? We use this excuse sometimes to get out of something. But we do all agree that prevention is better than cure. So be kind to the health of your heart and listen to the advise of this cardiologist.
Cardiologist Jennifer Haythe tells Well + Good what she does to keep her heart healthy.
Your heart
Why is it important to keep your heart healthy? It is connected to everything in your body and therefore it is affected by a lot of things. Dr. Haythe explains that your heart is a muscle and that it needs training to keep fit just like your other muscles. Your heart is also connected to your neurological system so when you’re not feeling great or when you have a lot of stress, it affects your heart as well. Therefore, it is important to keep your heart fit.
1. Set training goals
Dr. Haythe often runs to keep her heart healthy. She motivates herself by signing up for marathons or half a marathon. When you do this, you do have to train beforehand. She spends about 45 minutes on powerful cardiovascular exercises as often as four or five times a week. Swimming and running are examples of such exercises. Luckily your don’t have to set such a difficult task for yourself. The American Heart Association advises adults to spend about 150 minutes a week on semi-intensive exercise such as walking, dancing or gardening. Alternatively you can spend about 75 minutes a week on intensive exercise.
2. Get yourself a mediterranean diet
It usually doesn’t help to deny yourself certain foods, but you can strive towards a certain diet. Dr. Hythe tries to stick to the mediterranean diet as much as possible. For her, that entails eating red meat once every two weeks. Besides that, she eats a lot of fish, chicken, legumes, fruit, nuts, and olive oil.
3. Get enough sleep
Journal of the American College of Cardiology recently stated that too little or too much sleep can result in an increased chance of getting a heart attack. Dr. Hythe tries to get between seven and eight hours of sleep per night herself. She states that sleep is essential for the health of your heart. Your heartbeat and blood pressure go down when you sleep. The cardiologist also rather reads a book before going to bed than watching TV as a TV series only keep you from sleeping.
4. Meditate
A lot of people see meditation as something too abstract and floaty, but it is really good for your heart. Meditation slows your heartbeat down a little and makes your blood sugar lower as well. Both are good for the health of your heart says Dr. Hythe.
5. Clean teeth
Keeping your heart healthy by brushing your teeth? That sounds a bit odd, but the two are linked. Hythe explains that bad oral hygiene and unhealthy gums are connected to heart diseases. Therefore, she visits a specialist twice a year to have her teeth thoroughly cleaned. The research that Hythe talks about looked at the oral hygiene of 682 people. The result? The people who brushed their teeth less than two minutes twice a day has a bigger chance to get heart diseases than people who did brush their teeth two minutes twice a day.
