Lifestyle
Diet
A good diet is important for our health and can help us feel our best. Our diets should contain a variety of different foods, to help us get the wide range of nutrients that our bodies need. A healthy diet that can also keep your weight, blood pressure and cholesterol at healthy levels. This will in return help reduce your risk of developing coronary heart disease, having a stroke or becoming obese
A healthy diet is also very important for people living with a chest, heart and stroke condition and for your overall health and wellbeing.
Physical Inactivity
Getting more exercise can help reduce your risk of chest, heart and stroke diseases. It can also help you reduce your cholesterol and blood pressure, manage your weight and improve your mental well-being. It is probably the healthiest prescription you can give yourself and your family!
Being active can reduce your risk of developing some heart and circulatory diseases by as much as 35%. Being active has many benefits:
- helps control your blood pressure
- reduces bad cholesterol and increases good cholesterol
- help to control your blood glucose level
- helps you maintain a healthy weight
- helps you sleep better
- helps overall health and wellbeing
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Smoking
Never starting to smoke or giving up smoking is the single best thing you can do for your chest, heart and stroke health. Smokers are almost twice as likely to have a heart attack compared with people who have never smoked.
It is never too late to give up. Your will reap the benefits with improvements to your health and wellbeing and reduce your risk of developing chest heart and stroke illnesses. You will also have more money to spend on other things.
Alcohol
Drinking too much alcohol can have a devastating effect on your cardiovascular health (or in other words, your heart and blood vessels).
It can cause high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm. Both of these things can increase your risk of heart failure, heart attack and stroke. It is also strongly linked to liver problems and some cancers.
Alcohol also contains lots of calories so drinking a lot can lead to weight gain or even obesity, which are bad for our heart health.
Stress
While stress is not a direct risk factor for chest, heart and stroke conditions, it does impact on your health - in particular by how we choose to cope with stress.
Many people cope with stress by smoking, drinking too much alcohol and over- eating . These things can increase your risk of developing high blood pressure, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
Poor Sleep
Sleep is essential for a healthy heart and overall well-being. Research shows that people who don't sleep enough are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease—regardless of age, weight, and smoking and exercise habits.
Any change from your normal daily sleep routine is statistically related to greater risk of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular death. Researchers found that sleeping too little can disrupt underlying health conditions and negatively affect biological processes like blood pressure, glucose levels and inflammation. The same may be true for oversleeping.
Getting enough good quality sleep is important if you want to lower you risk of heart disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and stroke.
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