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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What is Cholesterol?

Image by Juhan Sonin via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Most people tend to have a negative view of cholesterol. We fear it and avoid it. We try to eat, as much as possible, foods that do not have a lot of it. So, we won’t have a high level of it in our blood when examined for it. Is this substance really responsible for harming our hearts?

Why Family History Matters to Your Heart Health

Image credit: Lauren Lion via Flickr.com

It’s in your DNA – Your brilliance and more …

Yes, I’m brilliant in some way and I got it mostly from my mom, I think. But then, it’s not just the brains that I got from her. There’s more …

What is Heart Failure?

Photo credit: EKG Technician Salary

Whenever you hear the phrase “heart failure,” you may be thinking that the heart is going to stop at any time. Heart failure basically means that your heart is not pumping blood, possibly because it is not appropriately filling with blood and/or it does not have sufficient pressure to pump blood from the heart completely. What are the symptoms of heart failure?

Understanding How Your Blood Vessels Work

In the previous post, we studied how the heart basically works. In this post, we will further explore the other parts of the body that play a part in the heart’s proper function – the Blood Vessels.

Watch the animated video below to get a better understanding of how the heart, the blood vessels and other parts of the body work together.

Understanding Your Heart – How Does the Heart Work?

This is a diagram of how blood flows in the human heart. The blue components indicate the pathways of de-oxygenated blood and the red components indicate the pathways of oxygenated blood.

By Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=830253

Many of us fail to give enough concern for the most important organ inside our body. Our heart is the only one muscle within our body that never rests. It works as an incredible pump that circulates blood all throughout our body without layovers.

Do You Know the 7 Risk Factors For Heart Disease?

Photo credit: EKG Technician Salary

There are several risk factors for cardiovascular disease, however, there are 7 big risk factors which everybody ought to be aware of. These are the most frequent risk factors, responsible for most heart problems. These 7 risk factors are diabetes, cigarette smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and family history.

Have You Been Putting Your Heart Health at Risk?

Heart problems along with other cardiac issues can be dreadful for anybody who experiences them. They are often frightening since they are potentially deadly. But many forms of cardiovascular disease do not have to be a death sentence.

The heart is probably the most important part in the human body. If your heart beat stops, you are going to die without health care treatment. You cannot live without the heart since it pumps blood throughout your body, delivering it to your brain as well as other body parts that need it.