Effective Ways To Keep Your Heart Healthy

Some of the best ways to keep your heart healthy include quitting smoking, getting regular check-ups from your doctor, reducing stress, eating more fiber, exercising regularly, moderating your drinking, adding fish to your diet, eliminating cholesterol, increasing your antioxidant intake, and many more.

Cardiovascular health is one of the most talked about topics in the medical, nutrition, and lifestyle industries today. Considering that cardiovascular-related diseases are the biggest killer in the world every year, it is a serious problem that thousands of specialists around the world are trying to address. However, as it turns out, some of the best ways to protect yourself from cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks, strokes, coronary heart disease, embolisms, and other serious health risks have nothing to do with going to a doctor’s office. You are in control of your heart health, because the most important elements in maintaining a healthy heart are the choices your personally make every day.

The things you eat and the things you do are in your control, and by altering your lifestyle and nutritional habits in certain ways, you can significantly boost the strength and longevity of your heart. Ideally, a combination of the heart health techniques explained below will make its way into your life to increase your health. If you can manage to implement all 20 in your daily or weekly life, then your ticker will be thrilled and your quality of life will surge dramatically. Let’s take a closer look at some of the very best ways to keep your heart healthy.

Ways To Keep Your Heart Healthy

Increase Antioxidant Intake

Antioxidants are some of the most important elements of human health, as they protect your body from the damaging effects of free radicals, which can cause chronic diseases, as well as cancer and cardiovascular disease. Studies have shown as much as a 20% reduction in heart disease when antioxidants are a major part of a person’s diet. Increase your intake of berries, nuts, beans, artichokes, cocoa, citrus fruits, and green leafy vegetables, all of which are high in antioxidants. Also intake of lean beef may also help in lowering blood pressure and reduce risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Quit Smoking

Cigarettes contain a dangerous combination of chemicals, many of which have been proven to negatively affect your heart health. Also, smoking causes a constriction of blood vessels, which leads to higher blood pressure and an increased chance of heart attacks and strokes.

Regularly See Your Doctor

No one likes going to see the doctor, as it usually means you are either sick or concerned about your health. However, regular check-ups with a doctor can enable you to discover your “danger” areas of health and doctors offer beneficial and targeted advice on how to eliminate or lower your risk factors that can contribute to heart disease based on your lifestyle, genetics, and other contributing factors.

Maintain Consistent Activity

Although exercise is very important for heart health, so is remaining consistently active. Sedentary lifestyles contribute to higher blood pressure, poor eating habits, lower metabolic rates, and a generally lower level of heart health. Take up a hobby like gardening, go for a bike ride, or volunteer at a community center to remain active in your free time without going to the gym.

Reduce Stress

Stress can really be a killer! It can increase your blood pressure and cholesterol levels, while simultaneously causing you to handle your stress in dangerous ways, such as an increase in smoking, drinking, or eating unhealthy foods to cope with stressful situations. Learning about and implementing healthy ways to cope with stress can seriously boost your heart health.

Laugh Hard and Often

Laughter is the best medicine for a number of reasons, but when it comes to heart health, laughter actually boosts your blood flow and prevents hardening of the arteries, which is a main factor that contributes to cardiovascular disease.

Exercise Regularly

Perhaps the most important way to avoid heart trouble is to exerciseregularly. It increases blood flow, boosts metabolism, lowers cholesterol levels, helps you lose weight, and maintains an active lifestyle that will keep your heart in great shape.

Follow the Right Career Path

Although this seems like an unrelated topic, choosing the right career and maintaining consistent happiness can do wonders for your heart health. It can stress, make your more active and energetic, and increase the release of beneficial hormones in your body that optimize your metabolism and keep your heart healthy.

Practice Yoga

Yoga is a wonderful way to relax and reduce stress, but it also increases the flexibility of your body, including the blood vessels and arteries, which can help to prevent plaque build-up and atherosclerosis, which both contribute to strokes and heart attacks.

Socialize Often

Maintaining an active social life will not only get you out of the house and moving around, but social interactions have been shown to lower blood pressure and increase the release of beneficial endorphins that keep your organs and immune system working properly.

Eliminate Cholesterol

Bad cholesterol (LDL cholesterol) can clog your arteries, cause plaque build-up, increase blood pressure, and generally ruin the health of your heart. By elimination “bad” cholesterol from your diet, and replacing it with beneficial cholesterol (HDL cholesterol), you can re-balance the fatty acids in your body to prevent cardiovascular diseases.

Get Enough Sleep

Sleep is essential to heart health because it gives your body a chance to rest and detoxify itself. Furthermore, a lack of sleep has been connected to calcium build-up in the arteries, which can cause heart attacks. Additional stress, irritability, and poor lifestyle choices are also a result of improper sleeping habits.

Add Fiber to Your Diet

Fiber is one of the most important dietary elements for protecting your heart. Fiber scrapes out and eliminates excess “bad” cholesterol, moderates your digestive system, improves the absorption of nutrients, and can even lower your chances of diabetes, which is a major co-contributor to heart disease.

Soak Up Some Sunshine

Getting some rays is not only relaxing, it also gives your body a much-needed dose of vitamin D, which is not only good for your bone strength, but has also been shown as a serious preventative vitamin for heart-related diseases, according to recent studies.

Reduce Alcohol Consumption

This is a tricky one, as most people suggest that a glass of wine or two a day is beneficial due to the antioxidants present. However, excessive drinking of less healthy alcoholic beverages can increase your blood pressure, result in obesity, and shift your cholesterol balance in a negative direction.

Work on Patience

Patience is a virtue that also happens to reduce stress. We are so commonly upset, anxious, or frustrated by having to wait in traffic jams or long lines that we are doing our body significant harm, while we could change our mindset and actually benefit our bodies instead. Shift your perspective and improve your chances of a healthy heart!

Lose Weight

Obesity is a major contributing factor to heart disease, as it increases your bad cholesterol, increases your blood pressure, elevates your chances of developing atherosclerosis, diabetes, and sleep apnea. Losing weight can eliminate these risk factors that can damage your heart.

Get a Pet

Studies have shown that connecting with a pet can increase your overall quality of life, lower stress, cause you to be more active, and generally reduce your chances of developing heart conditions. Get a new dog or cat and see what a boost to your mentality and health they can be!

In our modernized world, we are constantly dependent on smartphones, iPads, computers, television, and other technological advancements. many of these force us to not only be sedentary, which contributes to heart disease, but they also increase your level of stress hormones in the body and raise blood pressure. Take a break from technology once in a while and go out to enjoy the real world.

Remain Sexually Active

This may be a touch subject for some people, but in fact, remaining sexually active with your partner releases very beneficial endorphins and hormones in your body, counts as exercise, and has been shown in numerous studies to reduce stress, lower blood pressure, and contribute to a healthier heart.

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15 Useful Ways To Prevent Cancer

Some of the most effective ways to prevent cancer includes the use of whole grains, garlic, berries, tomatoes, green tea, spinach, turmeric, beans, coffee, ginger, and oregano as well as behavioral changes such as quitting smoking, exercising regularly, getting regular checkups, and losing weight.

What Is Cancer?

In recent decades, it seems like nothing strikes fear in the heart so much as the sound of cancer. The “Big C” causes nearly 15% of all human deaths around the world – between 8 and 10 million per year, on average. Cancer comes in many forms, and more than 100 have been identified thus far, and it seems like new varieties appear every year. By definition, cancer is a malignant tumor or a mass of mutated cells that can grow and metastasize within the body, compromising organ system function and eventually leading to death. Cancer is the most heavily researched disease in the world, and more than $1 trillion is spent on cancer treatment and infrastructure around the world each year. Unfortunately, every cancer is slightly different, as it attacks the body differently in almost every case, and can mutate to protect itself, making consistent or universal treatment nearly impossible.

Different varieties of cancer have significantly different mortality rates; for example, the one-year survival rate of pancreatic cancer is 25%, whereas the five-year survival rate for thyroid cancer is 97%). This means that many types of cancer can be “treated” and “sent into remission”, and there are many different treatments that have been tried. Chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and surgery are the most commonly used strategies in formal medical situations, but  there are many side effects and no guarantee of remission. Having cancer is a tragedy that strikes millions, so prevention is highly recommended. There is no telling when or in what form cancer will strike, so behavioral and dietary strategies for prevention are your best bet. Now, let’s take a look at 15 of the best ways to reduce your risk of cancer.

Ways To Prevent Cancer

There are remedies available to prevent cancer and the most effective ones are listed below;

Whole Grains

One of the most widely recommended anti-cancer dietary staples is whole grains, namely due to the high content of fiber and antioxidants. One of the more common forms of cancer is colorectal cancer, and whole grains have been directly linked to preventing the development of this cancer variety. There is a low glycemic load in whole grains and wheat, rather than things like white bread, potatoes, and other foods that increase your blood sugar rapidly.

Regular Exercise

Exercising regularly is a great way for your body to clean out toxins, release endorphins, boost your metabolism, and improve your immune system. All of these things are important for cancer prevention, as you need a well-oiled machine to fight off the constant barrage of carcinogens in our food, atmosphere, and personal lifestyle habits, such as smoking and drinking.

Garlic

The most famous active ingredient of garlic is allicin, which has been directly linked to a reduction in cancerous cells, and it appears to reduce the spread of cancerous cells, even inducing apoptosis (automatic cell death). Allicin is a powerful antioxidant substance that can help lower your chances of many types of cancers, including cancer of the esophagus, colon, and stomach.

Berries

Eating fruits and vegetables is a fundamental way to prevent cancer, but berries, in particular, have a high concentration of antioxidant nutrients and compounds that can prevent cancer from ever developing, such as anthocyanins, tannins, and flavonols. Some of the best berries to prevent cancer are blueberries, which are often referred to as a “superfood” – and with good reason!

Quit Smoking

More than 20% of cancer deaths are related to smoking in some way, so quitting is one of the first things to do if you want to prevent the onset of cancer later in life (or sooner than you think!). Cigarettes are packed with dangerous toxins and carcinogens that can greatly increase your chances of developing cancer – and not just lung cancer. More than a dozen other cancers have been linked to smoking, even those not related to the respiratory system.

Tomatoes

Lycopene is a powerful active ingredient inside tomatoes that has shown a great deal of antioxidant abilities. Most notably, lycopene has been linked to the prevention of prostate cancer in men, which is the most deadly cancer for men around the world. Additional research into tomatoes’ impact on other cancers is ongoing.

Green Tea

The catechins and epicatechins found in green tea make it a wonderful addition to your diet for many different health reasons, but in terms of cancer, green tea is an ideal preventative medicine. Those antioxidant compounds have been shown to directly reduce the size of tumors and prevent the spread of mutated cells, helping it stop cancer before it ever starts!

Reduce Alcohol Intake

Excessive alcohol consumption can weaken your immune system, compromise your liver, and generally promote toxicity within the body. Although some people say that one drink a day can improve overall heart health, alcohol consumption does increase the risk of throat, liver, esophagus, and mouth cancer, so beware of how much you drink!

Spinach

Green leafy vegetables have always been praised for their health benefits, namely due to its content of lutein, zeaxanthin, and beta-carotene, and in terms of cancer, these antioxidant compounds can limit the growth of cancerous cells, and promote overall health of the body.

Turmeric

The active ingredient of turmeric, a popular spice, is curcumin, which has been directly linked to apoptosis of cancerous cells, namely by preventing the flow of blood and nutrients to affected areas in the body. This spice has effects in many health conditions, but is often recommended for passive prevention – so add it to some of your meals!

Lose Weight

Obesity puts excess strain on all of the body’s systems, and can lead to other health conditions like diabetes and heart disease. When the body is weakened, it is easier for free radicals to strike. Therefore, losing some weight, or at least preventing obesity, remains one of the wisest and most effective ways to prevent cancer.

Coffee

There has been a great deal of debate about the benefits or dangers of coffee in recent years, but there is no denying that caffeine does have its benefits in battling brain, throat, and oral cancer. Everything in moderation, as always, but having two cups of coffee can be a major cancer preventer, provided you keep yourself hydrated as well, and don’t become too dependent on that caffeine boost.

Ginger

Ginger has a number of active ingredients that make it so useful in keeping the body healthy, including gingerol and zingerone, which have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. These can neutralize free radicals before they can ever cause your body harm, thereby protecting against a wide range of cancers.

Stress hormones can be helpful in some situations, but very dangerous if they are present in your body for long periods of time. They can weaken your immune system, exhaust your mind, increase oxidative stress, and compromise your metabolic activity. By relaxing and reducing anxiety, you can greatly prevent your chances of developing many varieties of this tragic condition.

Oregano

Oregano is able to neutralize carcinogens in the body, due to the presence of carvacrol, the active ingredient of this herb. Research has linked oregano to a slower spread of cancerous cells, and a reduction in size of tumors.

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