How to Reduce Your Risk of Heart Diseases and Heart Attacks?
Let’s discuss how to reduce your risk of heart diseases and heart attacks.
How to reduce your risk of heart attacks
SMOKING
If you smoke, you need to quit. And if someone in your family smokes, encourage them quit too. There is no doubt that quitting tobacco is difficult. But you need to understand that it is even more difficult to recover from a heart attack, or to live your life with a chronic heart disease.
The first step towards quitting smoking is to build your mental strength. When you feel like going back to the habit, remind yourself why you took this decision. Another tactic is to distract yourself from your addiction – keep yourself preoccupied with some work. You can also try a nicotine chewing gum to kick the habit.
FOOD
A healthy diet is, without doubt, one of the best weapons against heart disease. The food you eat (and of course its quantity) controls your cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, and body weight.
If these four things are in control, your heart naturally stays healthy.
Exercise
For a healthy life, exercise is mandatory. If you do not have any kind of exercise right now, start soon. You could start with just 10 minutes a day – even that can reap health benefits. After a week, make it 15 minutes, and slowly increase this time. In this digital age of Google and YouTube, saying that you don’t know have the time or money to go to the gym, is not an excuse.
Alcohol
If you drink too much, your blood pressure will increase. If blood pressure increases over a long period of time, the risk of heart disease also increases!
Besides this, excessive alcohol consumption also leads to increased risk of stroke, liver problems and cancers.
The ideal recommendation is to have no more than 2 pegs, that is 120 ml, in a day to increase your good cholesterol levels.
Salt
It is a proven fact that consuming too much salt will increase your blood pressure. As mentioned earlier, high blood pressure directly increases the risk of heart disease. Therefore, reduce the amount of salt in your diet. Let me also tell you that junk food has seven times the salt content as in a normal home-made meal.
People with high blood pressure (hypertensives) can ideally consume 1.5 gms (and no more than 2gms) of salt per day.
Dr Mahadevan Ramachandran, a cardiac surgeon with over 15 years of independent experience in the premier hospitals of Kerala. Currently working as Chief Consultant Cardiac Surgeon at the following hospitals:
Total Cardiac Care, Thiruvananthapuram
Cosmopolitan Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram,
Azeezia Medical College, Kollam
NIMS Medicity, Neyyantinkara
Total Cardiac Care – Facebook
Dr Mahadevan Ramachandran – LinkedIn
For consultations and low-cost bypass surgeries, book an appointment
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