by Whether you’re an existing heart champion, or if you’ve recently been advised that you are not, it’s always a good idea to check in with your heart health and make sure that you’re doing all you can do to ensure that your ticker is behaving the way it should be.
So to make sure that you start 2022, heart strong and heart-healthy, here are a few things for you to think about.
Start Easy, But Start Strong!
This means understanding what your goals are for the year when it comes to your heart health. Do you want to be more active? Do you need diet changes? Do you need a combination of different goals in order to restore or improve your heath-health?
All of these things need to be done, yes – but in what is a sure-fire way to lose interest very fast, taking on too many changes at once, will more often than not, lead to disappointment. Humans are funny things, and we are motivated by results. So taking on smaller changes to lifestyle first and then achieving those goals, will lead to bigger changes later.
Diet Matters
Of course, it does, and if your Cardiologist has said it’s time for a change, it probably is. So take it seriously, because diet has a massive impact on our heart health, and with heart disease stubbornly remaining at the top of the list as a cause of death in most western nations, take it seriously. Lean protein-based diets are a great place to start and incorporate fish and seafood into your diets while cutting back on the amount of animal protein, this can be a real game-changer for your heart health.
Definitely cut out processed meats and fatty foods (the bad kind – get some advice, here) if you want to get heart strong.
Hit The Road, Jack
We mean exercise, not firing your +1 (unless of course, it really is time to do just that). Lack of exercise remains one of the biggest drawbacks to modern living and it’s going to cost you dearly in future health bills and quality of life, and the worst part of that is that that future is entirely not necessary or inevitable.
A healthy, balanced lifestyle is as easily obtained by managing calorie intake, along with moderate exercise. Walking is king for the physically uninclined and a solid 5kms a day is all you need to keep your heart strong and working well and ticking nicely along and mind you – you don’t have to marathon your way through it either.
Trying to reduce the onset of heart disease should be on all of our ‘to-do’ lists for 2022, because the rate at which heart disease is increasing is extremely worrying, and younger people are starting to present with heart-related issues too, taking this concern firmly out of the ‘I’ll get to it when I’m older’ column.
But what frustrates many healthcare practitioners, is that it doesn’t have to be the death sentence that it does all too often turn out to be, early detection is key and early prevention.
