Taking care of your heart is a top issue for everyone, of every sex and color. And in February (probably because it’s the month of love) it’s time to talk about hearts: how to strengthen them, support them, and keep them ticking for longer!
To start off Heart Health Month, here are some things you can do everyday that make it easier on your heart:
Start the day off with a big meal. In fact, your eating for the day should look like an upside down food pyramid. It makes it easier on your heart, and your GI Tract. When you eat early in your day, it revs up your metabolism. Getting a variety of food groups helps tell your stomach to produce enzymes for all different things, and it’s more likely to give you good (heart supporting!) nutrition.
The only caveat is to eat healthy. A big breakfast of pastries and other sweets is a bad calorie to nutrient ratio, and might impact your heart negatively through your weight. But if you can eat a healthy meal, even if you would normally skip breakfast (meaning skip morning calories), it’s actually strongly correlated with being thinner, having a lower chance of diabetes, and having better heart health measured through things like triglyceride and cholesterol levels.
End the day with a small meal. Yeah, you just read about shaping your eating habits into an upside down pyramid, but it’s worth emphasizing that you need to taper off at the end of the day, and stop eating all together a few hours before bed because it’s really hard on your heart to have to digest while you sleep (sorry to everyone who finds a food coma satisfying).
Your body does a lot while you sleep. It has a care routine for your brain, for your heart, and for several other bodily processes and organs. Giving it more to do like digest even a last minute sweet tooth indulgence is a bunch of unnecessary work that increases your risk for a cardiac event (3 AM is when many heart attacks happen, and it’s very reasonably correlated with habits like late dinners, midnight snacks, or grazing until bedtime).
Take 10 minutes three times a day to destress. You might be having trouble finding 30 minutes a day to exercise, but I bet you can squeeze in time to reset your stress, anxiety, and focus (especially because you don’t have to go anywhere or shower afterwards!).
Stress, over time, can have a very tangible effect on your heart. If it’s just occasional stress, it can still do you in if you have heart problems because of something else. So invest a few minutes in yourself. It’s worth it. You’re worth it. Down the line, it will be so much more stressful if you develop health issues from stress.
How to do it? If you have no clue where to start, find a quiet space, put in your headphones, and pick out a guided calming exercise of YouTube. Or, find a portable and soothing hobby you can pop out when you need it.
Don’t forget nutritional support Your heart is important enough to deserve its own nutritional safety net against gaps in your diet, and Mito Cardia delivers that with a formula of carefully chosen ingredients that work together to support heart health.
Share your thoughts in the comments:
