How your lifestyle and diet affects your heart’s healthDuring a heart disease diagnosis, the doctor will ask you to describe the symptoms you are experiencing and for information regarding your medical history. A standardized medical exam will be used to assess your physical condition as well as listening of whooshing or swishing sounds of the heart or the so called heart murmurs. All these will provide the doctor with an idea of whether you are experiencing heart troubles or not. Further tests will be conducted upon suspicion of a heart disease.

Treatment options available for heart diseases

Once a certain heart disease has been diagnosed, medical care is important. Treatment aims at stabilizing the condition and ensuring that the symptoms are controlled over long term and if possible, administering a cure. While lifestyle changes, diet and stress reduction are crucial in ensuring that the heart disease is well managed, surgery and drugs still remain as the mainstay for conventional care.

How your lifestyle affects your heart health

To start with, if you are a smoker, make a point of quitting the habit. Exercising is a habit that you should get into as this makes the blood vessels and the heart strong and minimizes stress considerably. In addition, exercising boosts the levels of good cholesterol in the body. According to many studies, moderate alcohol drinking can significantly reduce the risk of one suffering from heart disease. However, women and men are advised not to exceed one or more than two drinks respectively.
Heart disease can also be treated and greatly prevented by learning how to relax. Even though success tends to vary from one person to another, techniques aimed at reducing stress have been found to be very effective in reducing heart arrhythmias, high blood pressure as well as emotional responses like anger, hostility and anxiety, which are highly associated with coronary heart disease, heart attack and angina. You are at liberty of choosing the kind of relaxation technique that suits you best. Nevertheless, some of the most recommended exercises include meditation, yoga, biofeedback training and yoga.

Impact of nutrition/ diet on heart health

The risk of suffering from a heart disease can be reduced significantly even by modest lifestyle and diet changes. Being overweight, particularly in your mid section area can result in diabetes and high blood pressure. The ability of the heart to pump blood into the various parts of the body can be strained greatly if you are more than 20 percent of the ideal weight based on your sex, height and age. Even though the risk of suffering from coronary heart disease and your blood pressure can be lowered considerably by reducing your consumption for trans fat and sodium, it is very important that you eat more vegetables and fresh fruits, unprocessed high fiber whole grains and healthy fats and protein sources, including fish, seeds, soy based items, nuts and avocados.