How To Keep Heart Healthy - 12 Expert Proven Ways

What you eat, how well you sleep, and how much you exercise are 3 essential factors that dictate your heart health.

Therefore, you must have heard countless times that eating a balanced and healthy diet, having a good sleeping routine, and performing stress-relieving physical activities are among the top 12 ways to keep your heart healthy.

Apart from these, there are many other lifestyle habits that you must adopt and avoid to keep your heart healthy and strong. Below, we have mentioned 12 such healthy heart tips in brief.

That is why finding ways to keep your heart healthy is important for your long-term health. To understand potential issues, there are many heart health checkup packages that will help you take the next steps by analysing your heart health.

How To Keep Your Heart Healthy? 12 Tips

An online blood test at home can help you have a comprehensive view of your blood quality, indicating the presence or absence of toxins and other risk factors. It is also a great way to know if your heart is healthy.

Based on the test results, you can start looking for ways to keep your heart healthy.

Following this, here is a list of 12 healthy heart tips that can help—

1. Foods TO EAT To Make Heart Healthy

Your diet is one of the most essential components that can make or break your overall heart health. That is why the first among the top 12 ways to keep your heart healthy is to eat heart-healthy foods.

Heart-healthy foods are those foods that help to maintain heart health by controlling the levels of the following risk factors of heart disease—

Blood pressure
Triglycerides
Cholesterol levels
Inflammation ²

So, here is a list of food items that can help to improve heart health quickly—

Leafy green vegetables
Whole grains
Berries
Avocados
Fatty fish
Fish oil
Walnuts
Beans
Dark chocolate
Tomatoes
Almonds
Chia seeds
Flaxseeds
Hemp seeds
Garlic
Olive oil
Edamame
Green tea

2. Foods To AVOID To Keep Heart Healthy

While some foods are highly beneficial for your heart, there are others that multiply the risk of heart disease. Hence, if you want to keep your heart healthy and strong, you must avoid the latter.

Moreover, 4 elements in food are a threat to your heart health if consumed in an excessive quantity. These include—

Sugars
Salts
Refined carbohydrates
Saturated fats

Hence, to make your heart healthy, you must minimise the intake of the following foods—

Red Meat
Soda
Cookies
Cakes
Muffins
White rice
Bread
Pasta
Pizza
Butter
Full-fat yogurt
French fries
Fried chicken
Ice cream
Potato chips ³

3. Fix Your Sleep

Sleep deprivation at night and excessive sleeping during the daytime can both increase your chances of developing heart disease.

Hence, if you want to improve heart health quickly, you must fix your sleeping patterns and make your sleep more routine-oriented. ⁴

4. Exercise Regularly to Improve Cardiovascular Health

The more your body works out, the more capable it becomes of filtering blood and keeping your heart healthier and stronger.

So, below is a list of healthy heart tips related to exercise that can help you improve your cardiovascular health—

Spend at least 1 hour doing vigorous exercise every week
Give a minimum of 2.5 hours per week for moderate physical activity
Get into resistance training

5. Maintain A Healthy Weight

Being overweight or having obesity increases your chances of developing heart disease with time and worsening it if you already have it. That is why maintaining a moderate weight is a crucial healthy heart tip. You can do this by reducing your calorie intake and performing physical exercises regularly. ⁵

6. Yoga

Stress is a leading cause of heart disease. Yoga can calm down your anxious brain and make your heart healthy.

While the methods that you need to adopt will vary depending on individual needs, if performed correctly and regularly, yoga can keep your heart healthy by improving your sleep and mental health. ⁶

7. Practice A Hobby

As already mentioned above, managing your stress is a crucial step among the top 12 ways to keep your heart healthy.

While you can try yoga and meditation on a physical level, practicing a hobby is a healthy heart tip for psychological improvement.

Hobbies refer to any activity that can help you to relax, such as—

Gardening
Reading
Drawing
Painting
Sketching
Playing a sport, etc

8. Laugh More: The Easiest Way to Keep Heart Healthy

Research has shown that people who laugh more often are at a lesser risk of cardiovascular disorders compared to those who don't.

Likewise, laughter has been directly linked to lowering stress levels and, therefore, saving you from a heart attack and a stroke.

Laughing out loud is, therefore, one of the easiest healthy heart tips. However, it is important to note that only laughing doesn't help. You have to combine it with other ways to keep your heart healthy in the long run. ⁷

9. Avoid Continuous Sitting

When researching how to know your heart is healthy, it is essential to understand the factors that make it unhealthy.

When you sit continuously for long hours, and your body movement is limited, it worsens the above-mentioned factors. Consequently, you not only gain weight eventually but also put your heart at risk for many diseases. ⁸

10. Quit Smoking

Do you know that approximately 20% of heart disease-related deaths happen because of smoking in the USA?

The mechanism behind this is simple: when you smoke, the cells that form the lining of your blood vessels swell. It leads to narrowing your blood vessels, ultimately causing heart problems.

That is why quitting smoking is among the top 12 ways to keep your heart healthy.

11. Avoid Second-hand Smoke

Being around smoke of all types, whether it is the smoke from a factory or simply inhaling cigarette smoke, is also equally dangerous for your heart health.

So, if you think that you can be around smoking and still keep your heart healthy and strong, then it is not possible.

Therefore, avoiding second-hand smoke is one of the most crucial healthy heart tip for non-smokers. ⁹

12. Minimise Alcohol Intake

Alcohol is not harmful to your body in limited amounts. But when you start consuming it in excess, it increases your blood pressure.

As a result, due to high blood pressure, your chances of suffering from heart disease rise significantly. Apart from this, it also creates hindrances in maintaining your heart health by increasing the risk of associated negatives like–

All in all, dietary modifications to limit salt intake, regular exercising, and managing stress levels are some of the best healthy heart tips. Apart from these, avoiding smoking and alcohol, performing yoga, and laughing more often are also equally influential ways to keep heart healthy.

But before you make any sudden changes in your lifestyle, it is important to get a complete body checkup package and get the advice of an expert to improve your cardiovascular health.