A healthy lifestyle can help prevent heart disease and stroke. Over the years, the cases of these have continued to rise, primarily due to poor diet and undesirable lifestyle choices. Your lifestyle not only serves as the best defense, but it’s also your responsibility.
Heart disease is a prominent cause of disability and death worldwide. Several factors can increase your risk of developing these. You have no control over some of these factors such as age, genetics, and gender, but there are many you can modify to lower your risk. If one of your goals is prioritizing your health, consider checking out informative and empowering sources such as avive.life/ and others.
It’s crucial to adopt the essential steps to reduce heart disease and stroke risk, especially if your close family members have heart-related conditions. The prevention of heart disease and stroke will require you to make sound decisions that’ll surely pay off in the long run.
Adopting these simple healthy habits may help minimize the modifiable risk factors for heart disease and stroke:
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Understand Your Risk
It’s crucial to know your risk for heart disease and stroke. Determine if your parents, siblings, cousins, and relatives have a history of heart conditions. If you have a family history, you should monitor risk factors you can modify such as exercise, diet, weight, and smoking. Don’t forget to keep your doctor up to date with your family history of heart conditions.
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Maintain A Healthy Diet
One of the changes to consider in your lifestyle is your diet. It’s time to switch to a healthy diet comprising fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, lean protein, and plant-based protein.
It’s time to limit your intake of refined carbohydrates, sweetened beverages, and processed meats. Make smart choices with the food you’re eating by checking the nutritional facts label on the packaging to cut down your intake of sodium, saturated fats, added sugars, and trans-fat.
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Stay Physically Active
When you maintain an active lifestyle, it’s one of the ways to stay healthy and lower your risk for disease. Generally, adults should set aside a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity every week. If you’re already active, you can increase the level of intensity to enjoy more benefits. If you have a sedentary lifestyle, it may be time to start exercising more to enhance your health.
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Maintain The Ideal Weight
Make it a priority to maintain a healthy weight. Try to cut it down if you’re close to being overweight or obese. It might be best to limit your intake of calories and adopt an active lifestyle. You should determine your body mass index (BMI), so you’ll have an idea if your weight is within a healthy range.
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Quit Smoking
Cigarette smoking can cause your blood pressure to rise and increase your heart attack and stroke risk. If you don’t smoke, it might be best not to try it at all.
When you smoke, vape, or use tobacco products, consider quitting if you value your health. If you’re having a hard time stopping, consider seeking professional help to find ways to quit the habit. Avoid swapping one source of tobacco for another and avoid exposure to secondhand smoke.
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Find Ways To Lower Stress
When a person is constantly under stress, it can urge them to engage in unhealthy habits such as smoking, drinking heavily, and binge eating. Remember that stress has a connection to heart disease in various ways such as increasing your blood pressure. In extreme cases, it can become a trigger for a heart attack.
If you want to lower your stress levels, you can manage them by exercising, meditating, listening to music, or focusing on something peaceful.
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Reduce Alcohol Intake
Excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages isn’t healthy in any way. It can bring about various issues such as raising your blood pressure and increasing the risk for cardiomyopathy, cancer, stroke, and other diseases. Additionally, alcohol can also add extra calories, leading to weight gain. Try to limit your intake to two drinks per day for men and not more than one drink per day for women.
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Practice Proper Management Of Diabetes
If you have diabetes, it can increase your risk for heart disease. Over time, elevated blood sugar due to diabetes can damage the blood vessels and nerves controlling the heart and blood vessels. With this in mind, it’s crucial to undergo testing for diabetes. If you have the disease, make sure to keep it under control.
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Control Your Cholesterol And Triglyceride Levels
When you have high cholesterol and triglycerides, you need to properly manage them by staying active, minimizing your calorie intake, and avoiding processed foods. In some cases, you need to take medications to lower the levels. The proper lifestyle and dietary modifications have an impact on your blood cholesterol and triglycerides.
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Get Enough Sleep
If you don’t have a regular sleeping schedule, you’re more likely to develop diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. These disorders can raise your chances of developing heart disease or stroke. Adults require seven to nine hours of sleep every night. If you want to lower your risk, make sure you’ll adopt good sleep habits.
Final Thoughts
You now have an idea of the various ways to lower your risk for heart disease and stroke. Although it can be challenging to modify your lifestyle and eating habits, it’s better to take small steps at a time than do nothing. If you want to change for the better and lower your risk, you’ll find that these healthy habits will be beneficial in the long run.
