Keep your heart in shape with these tips
The heart It is one of the most vital organs that human beings have. This muscle is responsible for moving the blood throughout the body and its rhythm is an indicator of health. To prevent heart disease it is best to prevent with a healthy lifestyle.
The cardiologist Manuel Abeytua, president of the Vascular Risk and Cardiac Rehabilitation Section, has offered a series of advice with which to strengthen the heart. Measures that make it possible to live with good health and keep this organ in shape while keeping diseases away.
Tips to take care of the heart
These are the advice of Dr. Abeytua:
- Activity routine. Avoid sedentary lifestyle and maintain frequent physical activity is one of the best tools that can be chosen to avoid any cardiovascular disease. However, it is not enough to do some weekly sports. There are people who go out for a walk but then sit down for the rest of the day. In these cases you have to break with this inactivity.
- Weight. Weight should be monitored since obesity is an important risk factor that is also related to other risk factors and diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure. To know if you have a good Body Mass Index there is a simple formula: divide the weight in kilos between the height in meters and divide again the result between the height in meters.
- Cholesterol. A great risk factor since it is one of the components of the atherosclerotic plaque that can be formed in our arteries, which becomes hardened and narrows the arteries reducing blood flow to the heart muscle and increasing the likelihood of forming clots
- Blood pressure. Hypertensive people have to monitor their blood pressure so that it does not exceed the recommended figures. It is advisable to follow up with the support of an expert person, but it is also important to control it personally.
- Diabetes. Diabetics should be monitored, in this case by measuring their sugar levels.
Genetic factors
Along with all these elements, you also have to control other factors of risk to be able to avoid cardiovascular diseases. Those who have a history of cardiovascular disease in their family, should have a greater control and go to periodic reviews marked by the specialist. Those who have suffered a heart attack before the age of 55 or a first-degree female relative, mother or sister, who have suffered a heart attack before the age of 65 must also comply with this routine.
"It is increasingly shown that diseases have many family components"explains Abeytua who adds that" On the one hand there may be a genetic content. If in a family all the members have very high cholesterol, it is very likely that there is a genetic content and that certain offspring may have high cholesterol, and in that case it is necessary to make analytical and see what measures to take. On the other hand, sometimes the diseases are familiar although they are not genetic because it is possible that there is no genetic component but they share habits that have an impact on health. In any case, when there is a family disease, it is necessary to increase the surveillance of cardiovascular health ".
Damián Montero
