Cardiovascular care is having a strong awareness of your body, recognizing symptoms that require medical attention, and knowing what to do when they occur. This includes understanding the difference between a severe symptom and a benign one. It also means maintaining a balanced diet, getting regular exercise, maintaining healthy weight levels, controlling cardiac risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol levels.
Heart and Vascular Care include steps that you as a patient can take to help ensure healthy heart function and what you should do if you believe that your condition is deteriorating. Heart disease may affect how much you can do on a specific day, but it shouldn’t stop you from engaging in your favorite activities. Below are some tips on how to improve your cardiovascular health.
- Exercise
It would help if you exercised regularly, at least four times a week. Engage in cardiovascular exercises that make your heart pump harder, such as brisk walking or swimming. This will help to strengthen your heart muscle and reduce your risk for diseases that affect the heart.
- Balance Your Diet
Include a variety of healthy foods in your diet, such as fruits and vegetables rich in antioxidants. Dark chocolate, high in cocoa, is also good for the heart due to its antioxidant content. Moderate your intake of red meat and dairy products, as these can be harmful to health depending on how much you consume. You can also include foods that are good for the heart, such as nuts and fatty fish.
Avoid fast foods. Fast food is generally high in calories and contains trans fats, which contribute to cardiovascular disease.
- Maintain Healthy Weight Levels
Weight control is essential, especially if you are overweight. Being obese can lead to heart disease and heart failure. Even if you are within the normal weight range for your height, it’s still important to keep your weight under control by not gaining or losing too much weight. This will help reduce strain on the heart muscle and prevent damage to the heart.
- Maintain Blood Pressure and Cholesterol Levels
High blood pressure and high cholesterol levels can lead to cardiovascular disease. Maintain reasonable control over these risk factors, which you can do by controlling your weight and making sure that you do not smoke. Proper diet and exercise will also help. In addition, if your doctor prescribes medications to treat other conditions such as diabetes, take them just as directed.
- Be Alert to Symptoms
Heart disease can be asymptomatic, meaning that you will not experience any symptoms at all. This is just one reason why it’s so important to regularly have your heart checked out by a doctor. Call your doctor if you notice any changes in how often or how long you feel your heartbeat, shortness of breath, unusual fatigue, unexplained weight loss, or any swelling in the lower legs.
To summarize, cardiovascular care refers to the state of having great awareness about your body and identifying symptoms that need medical attention. You can improve your cardiovascular health by exercising, eating healthy, and maintaining the right weight. Maintaining healthy blood pressure and cholesterol levels as well as monitoring symptoms can also help.
