How to Keep Your Heart Healthy: Tips for a Strong Heart

Keep Heart Strong And Healthy - Activ Together — Have you been kind to your heart and given it all the love and attention it deserves; or has it been ignored?

September 29 is World Heart Day and it would be the right time to take a moment to check how your heart is doing and feeling!

Have you been kind to it and given it all the love and attention it deserves; or has your heart been ignored?

Your heart is the center of your whole system and here’s what you can do to keep it happy and healthy.

15 Ways To Maintain Heart Health

Strengthen the muscles of your heart by getting regular exercise
As with other muscles, your heart muscles become strong when they are made to contract and release repeatedly at a fast pace.

This keeps your heart beating nicely. It also burns away any accumulated fat that could deposit in your arteries that leads to heart attacks. Keep the pipe lines clean!

Pick one activity from here, and do it six days a week for 30 minutes:

Walk
Yoga
Jog
Run
Cycle
Swim
Aerobics/zumba/kick boxing
Active sport (football, tennis, badminton; etc)

Eat heart healthy foods like avocado, oatmeal, salmon, olive oil, nuts, berries, pure chocolate (100 per cent), legumes and spinach. Make one of these a part of every meal.

Cut out the ugly artery clogging fried foods, oily foods, processed foods and artificial sugars.

Have a cup of coffee/green tea. Both have anti-ageing properties.

Have a glass of red wine (1 glass per day max). More anti-ageing!

Consume high fiber diet.

Get Your 5 A Day
Eat at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables a day. They’re a good source of fibre, vitamins and minerals. There are lots of tasty ways to get your 5 A DAY, like adding chopped fruit to cereal or including vegetables in your pasta sauces and curries.

Cut Down On Salt
To maintain healthy blood pressure, avoid using salt at the table and try adding less to your cooking. Once you get used to the taste of food without added salt, you can cut it out completely.

Give up Smoking
If You ‘re a smoker, quit. It’s the single best thing you can do for your heart health.
Smoking is one of the main causes of coronary heart disease. A year after giving up, your risk of a heart attack falls to about half that of a smoker.

Read the food label
When shopping, it’s a good idea to look at the label on food and drink packaging to see how many calories and how much fat, salt and sugar the product contains. Understanding what is in food and how it fits in with the rest of your diet will help you make healthier choices.

Meditate. This reduces stress levels and makes the heart pump normally. Even 10 minutes a day can be of much good.

Do one enjoyable activity every day. A crossword; phone your best friend; read a book; watch a comedy show; anything that is happy and positive.

Get your annual health check-up.

Plan a daily routine that makes you happy and stick to it. This lowers stress caused by disarray.

Disconnect! Take time off from your phone, computer, TV and mental hang ups.

Relax your body and mind. Light candles, play happy music, spray your house with scents. Your environment affects your mood.

(This article was authored by Ms. Anuja Atreya and first appeared on https://www.practo.com/healthfeed/15-ways-to-keep-your-heart-healthy-and-happy-24075/post)