How to support Your Heart Health
Heart rock at Joshua Tree. Let’s take care of our heart together this month and always!
It’s February, which means it’s National Heart Month. This strong muscle pumps your blood throughout your body for your whole life and we want it working good for a long time. I’m sure you already know all about how important it is to keep your heart healthy, including your cholesterol and blood pressure levels, so let’s dive into to the why and how.
First, it is important to know how simple it actually is to take care of your circulatory system, but how little people actually do. The main four pieces of advice are having a healthy body fat percentage, eating a whole foods diet, not smoking, and exercising at least 150 minutes a day.
While it is typically thought that fat affects heart health, it is actually sugar. Sugar is the silent poison in all of this. To say simply, the amount of sugar that is consumed in the United States is causing most of our arteries to harden and inflammation to spread throughout the body. To keep our arteries and heart healthy it is important to eat heart healthy fats including olive oil, avocado, nuts and seeds and fish.
Another huge issue is inflammation, which can be caused by various reasons. One being the gut microbiome. The collection of bacteria in the gut can actually predict whether or not you might have diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. As gut bacteria is an indicator of the foods you eat, a diet high in gluten and fried, starchy food is going to indicate a high blood glucose levels, high inflammation, as well as cholesterol. It’s important to eat heart healthy foods that just coincidentally can also diversify your gut microbiome. This includes colorful fruits and vegetables like onions, cranberries, garlic, berries, cabbage, the more color the better.
Another issue that can cause inflammation is loneliness and stress as well as lack of physical activity. With most people working from home and lack of contact or communication even between family members, loneliness levels are rising. People are also more stressed and caught up in the go-go-go lifestyle more than ever, all while sitting and consuming diets high in processed food. This all adds up. One simple way to fix this is to eat dinner with your loved ones, give someone you love a call and go for a walk around your block. All small things, but over time, can significantly reduce levels of inflammation in the body and thus result in a healthier heart.
Basically, try to eat all the colors and as much as diverse fruit and vegetables you can. Try to exercise moderately, bonus points if you can get your heart rate up at least a few times a week. Let’s keep our heart healthy this month, and always.