Preventing Heart Diseases and Stroke

Heart diseases, heart attacks, and strokes are among the leading causes of death in the United States. Risk factors like hypertension, high cholesterol, smoking, diabetes, and poor diet develop heart diseases in the majority of the population.

Certain inevitable factors like age, ethnicity, and family history play a pivotal role in increasing the risk of heart attack or stroke. You have to know your risk and educate yourself for the best prevention and treatment plan.

In addition to learning how to prevent heart diseases and stroke, factors like smoking, diabetes, poor diet, physical activity, cholesterol, blood pressure, and alcohol consumption can be controlled to reduce the risk of further complications like a heart attack.

How to Prevent Heart Attack and Stroke?

Doing regular checkups and controlling certain risk factors are the main methods of preventing heart attack and stroke. Physicians advocate preventive measures for increasing longevity. Some of the lifestyle changes that you can adopt for heart disease and stroke prevention include:

• Maintain a healthy diet: Having a balanced diet is essential to maintain your heart's health as it improves the circulation system and provides enough vitamins for a healthy body. Try limiting high sodium foods, sweetened drinks, trans fat, and saturated fats.

• Exercise regularly: Be regularly active to strengthen your cardiovascular fitness and maintain a healthy weight. You can also manage your blood pressure and cholesterol through physical activity.

• Quit smoking: Smoking is dangerously harmful to your health. It can boost your blood pressure and lower good cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart diseases. Quit smoking to reduce your risk for heart attack or stroke.

• Manage stress: Managing your stress is crucial as it acts as a trigger for increasing blood pressure. Severe stress is linked to heart disease, and the way to control it is through meditation, exercising, and listening to soothing music.

• Control cholesterol and diabetes: High cholesterol levels and diabetes and primary risks of heart diseases. It can damage your arteries and restrict the blood flow, increasing the risk of a stroke. You can control this through proper medication, exercise, and a healthy diet.

• Limit alcohol consumption: Heavy drinking can increase blood pressure and gain weight. Hence, if you have a drinking habit, limit your alcohol consumption to reduce the risk of heart disease.

• Keep your blood pressure in check: High blood pressure is one of the leading causes of heart attack and stroke. You have to check your blood pressure frequently and make preventive lifestyle changes.

• Maintain a healthy weight: Being overweight or obese heightens the risk of heart disease. Maintaining a healthy weight through proper diet and regular exercise can control other risk factors associated with obesity.

• Ensure you get proper sleep: Many risk factors are inter-connected. Having a good sleep will reduce the risk of high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes. Hence, in order to maintain your cardiovascular health, you should have a good sleep for 7 to 9 hours a day. If you experience any sleeping disorder such as sleep apnea, consult your physician and take adequate treatment.