Heart Health: What's Good for the Heart
The heart works day and night. It pumps blood throughout the body and supplies organs, muscles, and tissues with oxygen and nutrients. To ensure that it can perform this task reliably for as long as possible, it’s worth making a conscious effort to keep an eye on your heart health.
Many factors that affect the heart and circulation can be managed in everyday life. Regular exercise, a balanced diet, not smoking, getting enough rest, and managing stress effectively are among the most important foundations of a heart-healthy lifestyle.
What does heart health mean?
Heart health is about more than just a regular heartbeat. Blood vessels, blood pressure, blood lipids, blood sugar, body weight, and physical fitness also play a role.
A healthy cardiovascular system constantly adapts to the body’s needs. During exercise, the heart beats faster; at rest, the workload decreases again. The blood vessels regulate blood flow and help ensure that all parts of the body are reliably supplied with blood.
You can learn how the heart, blood vessels, and circulatory system work together on this page Cardiovascular System.
What Factors Affect Heart Health?
Heart health is influenced by various factors. Some of these can be changed, while others cannot.
Factors That Can Be Influenced
These include, among other things:
- Smoking
- Lack of exercise
- unbalanced diet
- chronically elevated blood pressure
- abnormal blood lipid levels
- elevated blood sugar levels
- Overweight
- heavy alcohol consumption
- prolonged stress
- lack of rest
Factors that cannot be influenced, or can be influenced only to a limited extent
These include:
- advancing age
- genetic predisposition
- certain pre-existing conditions
- biological and hormonal factors
A healthy lifestyle cannot completely eliminate risks. However, it can help reduce modifiable risk factors and support overall cardiovascular health.