Exercise

Try to be more physically active. Talk with your doctor about the type of activities that would be best for you. If possible, aim to get at least 150 minutes of physical activity each week. Every day is best. It doesn’t have to be done all at once.

Quit Smoking

If you smoke, quit. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death. Smoking adds to the damage to artery walls. Quitting, even in later life, can lower your risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer over time.

Follow a heart-healthy diet

Choose foods that are low in trans and saturated fats, added sugars, and salt. As we get older, we become more sensitive to salt which can cause swelling in the legs and feet. Eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, and foods high in fiber, like those made from whole grains. Get more information on healthy eating from NIA. 

Keep a healthy weight

Balancing the calories you eat and drink with the calories burned by being physically active helps to maintain a healthy weight. Some ways you can maintain a healthy weight include limiting portion size and being physically active. 

Keep your diabetes, high blood pressure, and/or high cholesterol under control.

Follow your doctor’s advice to manage these conditions, and take medications as directed.

Don’t drink a lot of alcohol.

Men should not have more than two drinks a day and women only have one.

Manage stress.

Learn how to manage stress, relax, and cope with problems to improve physical and emotional health. Consider activities such as a stress management program, meditation, physical activity, and talking things out with friends or family. 

Source: https://www.nia.nih.gov

5 Heart Numbers  You Need to Know

Call it a health numbers game. Knowing just a few key metrics can provide a pretty accurate picture of your current cardiac fitness and give you ongoing motivation to maintain healthy heart numbers and improve less healthy ones. 

It’s important to remember that all of these numbers fall on a continuous scale. It’s not enough to say you have high or low blood pressure—your doctor is looking at how high or how low.

Johns Hopkins cardiologist Michael Blaha, M.D., M.P.H.

Five key things to track to know your numbers:

1. How many steps do you take per day. Moving a lot improves every other heart-health measure and disease risk, says Blaha. That’s why he often urges walking up to 10,000 steps a day or almost five miles.
2. Your blood pressure. High blood pressure, or hypertension, has no symptoms; it can only be detected by being measured. A score of 120/80 is optimal and 140/90 is normal for most people. Higher readings mean that arteries aren’t responding right to the force of blood pushing against artery walls (blood pressure), directly raising the risk of heart attack or stroke.
3. Your non-HDL cholesterol. That’s your total cholesterol reading minus your HDL(high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, a measure of fats in the blood that can narrow and clog arteries to the heart. Lower is better: Aim for a score lower than 130 mg/dL or,if you’re at a high risk of heart disease, lower than 70–100mg/dL.
4. Your blood sugar. High blood sugar ups your risk of diabetes which damages arteries. In fact, type 1 and type 2 diabetes are among the most harmful risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
5. How many hours of sleep a night you get. Although there’s no one “right” answer for all, consistently getting the number of hours that works for you helps lower the risk of heart disease, Blaha says. Most people need to sleep six to eight hours a night.

Source: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org