World Heart Day: Time To Know Your Health Scale
Increase Awareness to Prevent Heart Disease
Do you know how healthy your heart is? In this modern world, people rarely have time to concentrate on their health. Obesity, unhealthy diet, high blood pressure, cholesterol, bad sugar levels and lack of exercise are some of the main causes for heart disease. Since World Heart Day is fast approaching, it is high time to make changes to our lifestyle and educate people about heart disease and ways to prevent it. Here are some easy and simple ways to do that:
Quit Smoking
In the United States, almost one in every five people die each year because of smoking. The chemicals in tobacco smoke not only damage blood cells, but also weaken the function of your heart and blood vessels. If you are a smoker, the best thing to do is to quit right away.
Physical Activity
Keep your body fit by doing regular exercise. Simple physical activities such as walking, running or swimming increase skeletal muscle strength. This also helps reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels to prevent heart disease. Make it a habit and spare at least 30 minutes of your day.
Avoid Obesity
Nearly 70% of all Americans are overweight. This leads to developing health problems such as heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes and more. Hence it is a must to maintain a healthy weight. You should check with a BMI calculator at least once a year. If you are overweight, take precautionary measures like eating fewer calories than your body needs and doing aerobic exercise for 30 minutes daily.
Healthy Food Habits
Take plenty of fibrous foods such as whole-grain cereals, potatoes, and bran to help you lower the risk of heart disease. Avoid fat products. Eat more of fruits and vegetables – they are a good source of fibers, vitamins and minerals. Reduce salt as much as possible in your foods to maintain your blood pressure and sugar level under control. Include fish in your meals at least twice a week. While shopping, keep track of the calories mentioned on the food and drink labels. It is always good to know how much fat, salt and sugar the product contains. This will help you choose a diet with less calories.
Avoid Alcohol
Alcohol contains more calories. Drinking regularly and over a long period of time, can increase your blood pressure which is the main cause of heart disease. It also weakens the heart muscle, and this can lead to heart failure.
Periodical Heart Check-ups
It is important to do periodical heart check-ups like ECG and Echo tests even if you do not have health problems.
Organize Awareness Campaigns
September 29th is an important day for raising heart-health awareness. Many health organizations host events across the country to create awareness and to prevent heart disease.
You can also host campaigns in your local community and ask health care professionals, dietician and the general public participate. Arrange a group discussion where people can share their views about heart diseases, preventive measures that need to be adopted and the necessity to change unhealthy lifestyle. You can surprise the participants with cool and exciting gifts. Because they are quite popular and versatile, you can go with customized silicone wristbands. These products are trendy, cost-effective, fashionable and easily customizable. You can get them online and choose from a variety of types, colors, fonts, sizes and styles. Customizing your wristbands with messages like “Follow Healthy Habits” or “Do Regular Heart Check-ups” is a useful option to promote public awareness.
