Keeping your heart healthy is everything, and did you know that 80% of premature heart disease and stroke can be prevented? It’s true, and with odds like that, wouldn’t you like to know what you can do to lower your risk? While we all think we know what to do to keep our hearts healthy, do we really all do those things? Changing just a few of the things we do every day can do a lot for our hearts, and keeping them healthy and happy goes a long way to our well-being. Who is in?
If you’ve ever been to an emergency room with chest pain, you know that one of the first questions you’re asked is whether you smoke. Not only does it smell bad, cost a lot of money, and make you sick, but smoking is a major risk factor for both heart attack and stroke. So it’s no surprise that one of the best things you can do to improve your heart health is to ditch cigarettes.
Other things on that list are proper weight management, limiting calories, exercising, maintaining healthy blood pressure, reducing stress, managing cholesterol levels, and of course knowing your risks.
Simply put, the risk factors for stroke, other than smoking, are high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, age, family history, taking birth control pills, a previous heart attack, heart failure, and heavy drinking of alcohol.
Similarly, the risk factors for a heart attack are again, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels, diabetes, hormone replacement therapy, smoking, and not getting enough exercise.
Imagine how much more ‘heart’ healthy we would be if we exercised more, watched what we ate, kept a tight control on our blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and tried to maintain a healthier lifestyle.
Sometimes, even when we try very hard, heart attacks and strokes happen. If you experience sudden weakness or numbness in your face or extremities, if you have a sudden severe headache, difficulty speaking or understanding speech, sudden darkening in one eye, or unexplained dizziness, you may have a stroke.
If you have chest discomfort, pressure, pain, tightness, or discomfort in your arms, back, neck, jaw, stomach, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, or break out in a cold sweat, you may be having a seizure. to the heart. In both cases, seek medical attention immediately, it may save your life!
