Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States annually. What can be done to prevent heart disease?
The answer is a complicated one, but there’s no doubt leading an active lifestyle is important. While this particular blog focuses on exercise, diet plays a much bigger role in heart health. It doesn’t matter how effective your workout regime is, if you are consuming trans fats, saturated fats, and foods which cause inflammation, your heart will pay the price. However, exercise can improve heart health if you’re eating right.
‘Leading an active lifestyle’ is a broad term, and it’s easy to get lost. Specifically, interval training has been unmatched in it’s benefits to the heart, as well as battling diabetes, and losing weight, which are all big contributors to heart disease.
Interval training is short bursts of high intensity exercise, followed by slightly longer periods of active recovery. The more muscles you can involve, the better. More muscles involved means your heart has to work harder to pump blood to more areas, leading your heart to have to become stronger.
For example, you could try three rounds of as many pushups as you can in a minute period, with two minute breaks in between. Incorporating weights into your training is even better. Stronger muscles ease tension on the heart. Oh, and being strong is inversely correlated with death in men. Yoga, non-impact sports, and simple activities like gardening or cleaning help to relieve blood pressure and burn calories.
The good news is, to have a healthy heart, you don’t have to exercise for hours on end. You just need a short workout in which you give it your all.
