10 Heart Healthy Cooking Tips

When you want your family to have healthy hearts, aside from encouraging them to exercise, it is critical to help them have a good diet. As a mom of 5, it is my duty to use the proper cooking techniques that can help in reducing the fat and cholesterol in the food I serve to my family. When cooking healthy meals for the whole family, you’ll lower everyone’s risk of heart disease.

Let me share in this post 10 heart healthy cooking tips that you can easily implement whenever you cook at home.

1. Use healthy oils

Using healthy oils in cooking is a great first step in improving your cooking. Olive oil and canola oil are the best oils because they’re monounsaturated. I use canola oil since it is cheaper.

Heart Healthy Food Ideas When Eating Out

Most people nowadays eat on the go, that’s why many fast food chains and restaurants are really flourishing. Eating home-cooked meals is inherently healthier, but if you must eat out, you can still choose to have heart-healthy food if you want to. Here are 7 food suggestions and guidelines for you to maintain a heart-healthy diet when eating out.

How Do You Maintain a Healthy Blood Pressure?

In the previous post, it was mentioned that one of the most important numbers you need to monitor concerning your heart is your blood pressure.  Again, blood pressure is the amount of force exerted on the walls of your blood vessels as blood passes through. The normal blood pressure value is less than 120/80.

If you're experiencing high blood pressure over a long time period, you might be at risk for heart disease. It’s crucial that you do everything you can to lower your B.P. If your doctor diagnosed that you are with high blood pressure or if you have a family history of high blood pressure, then you need to do all you can to lower your B.P.

How do you lower your blood pressure?

5 Steps to Quit Smoking and Reduce Your Risk for Heart Disease

Are you a smoker? I would like to kindly remind you that smoking contributes to shortening your life dramatically.  It’s a fact that heart disease is the number one killer disease in the United States and the number one risk factor of this illness is smoking.  It’s sad that many could have avoided the fatal disease if only people would quit smoking.

8 Ways to Get a Good Night Sleep for a Healthy Heart

We’ve been learning about the different ways we can take good care of our heart. In the past blog posts, we discussed exercise and diet. In this post, we will look at how having a good night sleep can help keep the heart healthy. We will also look at some ways to get a good night sleep.

Getting quality sleep every night is one simple way to protect your heart. When you have problems getting enough sleep, you will feel fatigued. You will possibly gain weight, too, as a result of eating more to satisfy your energy needs.  Lack of sleep can also cause high blood pressure, irregular heart rate, and increased heart rate, thus increasing your risk of heart disease.

How Exercise Keeps Your Heart Healthy

You’ve probably heard that it is essential to exercise to maintain a healthy heart. However, you may not fully grasp how it actually performs this important work. Oftentimes understanding the actual mechanism of this heart-healthy activity will encourage you to take action on the changes you need to have a healthier heart.

Exercise is good for the heart.
Image by www.localfitness.com.au - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

How to Change Your Diet to Lower Cholesterol

In the last post, I talked about cholesterol – the good and the bad and its effects on the body. Now, what if you have just had your blood works and it seems that your cholesterol is way higher than 200.  A total cholesterol score below 180mg/dL is considered optimal, according to the American Heart Association.

Would you immediately go to the drugstore to get a cholesterol reducing medicine? Before you do so, why not consult your doctor first regarding attempting to lower your cholesterol by means of changing your lifestyle. This post is about some suggestions on how to change your diet to lower your cholesterol intake.

Eat fiber-rich fruits and vegetables.
Image by Gila Grand at en.wikipedia, CC by 2.5

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