These 10 Steps Could Save You From Your Next Heart Attack
February is National Heart Health month, so it’s a perfect time to talk about one of the world’s greatest killers. Each year, heart disease kills about 610,000 Americans and causes more deaths than all cancers combined.
Because the American diet is so disastrous for your health, the odds are that you yourself are already on the path to heart disease. In fact, 47% of all Americans have one of the three big heart disease risk factors: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or smoking.
Fortunately, the path to heart disease isn’t engraved in stone. For those looking to take control of their heart health, we have some guidelines below.
1. Quit Smoking
Smoking is the single most important thing you can do to decrease your heart disease risk. According to several studies, smokers are four times as likely to contract the disease, which means they’re four times as likely to have a stroke or a heart attack. If you’ve had issues quitting in the past, consider trying our Anti-smoking formula. It’s been used by many ex-smokers who’s found great results.
2. Remove Salt from Your House
Salt is a subtle beast that increases blood pressure and damages your cardiovascular system. The worse yet, it is in everything we eat from Starbucks Frappuccinos to Macaroni and Cheese. In light of this, we recommend you remove salt from your house. No more “when it rains it pours” malarkey. Those days need to be over. Now.
It might feel drastic to eliminate salt from your kitchen, but it’s not. Sodium will turn up anywhere because it’s used in everything.
3. Move for 30 Minutes
As this famous Youtube video reminds us, getting up out of your seat for 30 minutes a day can transform your health. Exercising helps improve all your body’s systems — and should absolutely be mandatory thing in everyone’s daily life. The longer and harder you exercise, the better it is for your health. At the very least, you should be walking for 30 minutes a day.
Getting a fitness tracker can help motivate you to move a little bit more. We challenge you to find your own system and stick with it. Your life depends on it.
4. Eat the Rainbow
Fruits and vegetables are cardio-protective foods, full of antioxidants. Antioxidants are natural substances that help prevent and delay damage to cells. Consuming an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables helps repair damage to the cardiovascular system caused by high blood pressure, high blood glucose, and high cholesterol. Try eating a variety of colors every day, with every meal. Eating green alone can do wonders.
5. Manage Your Stress
According to several studies, stress, depression, anxiety, hostility, anger and impatience can increase your odds of dying from heart disease. Managing your heart health means managing your stress. One of the greatest ways to reduce stress is through breathing exercises. Try this: inhale for a slow 4 seconds, hold for 8, and then exhale for another 4 seconds. Repeat until you are calm and your mind is quiet.
You can do this 16-second cycle at any time. Give it a try the next time you find yourself stressing.
6. Manage your Snoring
It may sound strange, but poor heart health and snoring are connected. See, they both are signs of sleep apnea, a disorder in which you have pauses in your breathing or shallow breath while you sleep. In other words, if you suffer from sleep apnea, your body struggles to get the oxygen it needs, which forces your cardiovascular system into overdrive.
7. Replace Butter with Extra-virgin Olive Oil
Here we have a change that has almost zero impact on the flavor of your food and can powerfully reduce your exposure to cholesterol issues. Unlike other types of oil, olive oil is high in monounsaturated fats, a “good fat” known to lower cholesterol.
Because Italian olive oil tends to have some canola mixed in there, we recommend that you try a cold-pressed Californian type.
8. Get a Dog
The CDC and the NIH both conducted heart-related studies and found that pet owners had lower blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels than everyone else. They also found those who had already suffered from a heart attack had better recovery rates when they owned a pet. Scientists believe pets reduce stress and, in the case of dogs, encourage their owners to get out and exercise more.
9. Drink Green Tea
Countless studies have shown that green tea dramatically reduces your risk of heart disease. One large study found that those who drank more than 4 cups of green tea a day reduced their risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke by 25%. In fact, green tea is so powerful that many doctors recommend that smokers drink it to help offset the effects of the bad habit.
10. Brush and Floss Twice a Day
Several studies have found a relationship between those who practice good oral hygiene and those who have good heart health. Although no one’s entirely sure, there is evidence that shows the same bacteria found in gum disease was the same as the one’s found in diseased arteries. All of this is to say that to keep your heart healthy, you’ve got to keep your teeth clean.
