Heart Health

Cardiovascular disease continues to be one of the leading causes of death in Australia. If it doesn’t affect you, it affects someone know. It can be very common in you families medical history, so here is few strategies to help reduce your chances of being affected.

Firstly it is important that you are aware of the risk factors, whilst family history can be a risk factor there are many contributing lifestyle and health risk factors. These include:

• Diabetes: increased sugar may lead to heart disease because sugar may increase the production of triglycerides in your blood. Which in turn may cause heart disease.
• Smoking: The toxin you introduce may accumulate in your heart and prevent it from functioning properly.
• Obesity/Overweight: being overweight contributes because excess fat may block arteries and prevent blood flow to the heart
• Sedentary lifestyle & lack of exercise: As exercise burns fat and keeps it away from your heart while promoting blood circulation all over your body thus.
• Family history: at risk of possibly carrying the gene that predisposes you to developing heart disease as well.

Here are the some preventative methods to  ssential to cardiovascular support:

• Quit smoking.
• Pick the right fats: Not all fat are bad. While an excessive intake of deep fried food and animal fat may be bad for your heart (saturated fats), your body needs a moderate amount of Essential Fatty Acids or EFAs such as Omega-3 and Omega-6 for it to function smoothly.
• Exercise regularly: Moderate exercise of at least 20 to 30 minutes three times a week may already reduce your chances of developing heart disease.
• Limit  sugar: Avoid white sugar, white flour and refined food that contain high amounts of sugar to enhance their flavour.
• Limit salt intake: There is also a link between high sodium intake and high blood pressure. Avoid salty foods to keep your blood pressure down and avoid overworking your heart.

Foods to introduce/ increase

•  high fibre foods

•  fresh fruit and vegetables

•  fish

•  almonds, bananas, pineapple, avocados, berries, garlic, onion, lentils, cinnamon.

Foods to avoid/ reduce

•  refined, high sugar foods

•  high saturated fat foods

Things to remember:

•  maintain a healthy weight

•  exercise

•  maintain stress levels

•  go for a steamed or baked option rather than a fried:

•  drink lots of water