7.6 million people in the UK are currently living with a heart or circulatory disease. In the UK someone dies from a heart or circulatory condition every 3 minutes.
It is estimated that more than half of the people in the UK will get a heart or circulatory condition in their lifetime.
Its so easy to take our heart health for granted, its been ticking away our whole lives so why start worrying now?
Well unfortunately, as we get older certain things in our lives will gradually increase our risk of heart and circulatory disease, our every day choices can end up putting strain on our hearts!
Thins such as smoking, high fatty food intake, lack of exercise and so on can all contribute to higher risks of these conditions.
For more information on heart disease risk factors see our Heart Health page.
So what can we do?
Educate yourself- know your numbers
If you are unsure of current levels- go for a check up!
Knowing things like your blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels helps you to figure out where you stand and where you may need to make some changes.
Healthy eating habbits
Figuring out where you may need a change (or a touch of self-dicipline) when it comes to your food- and this doesn’t mean restrictive dieting or cutting out whole food groups!
This could mean small changes such as choosing leaner cuts of meat, reducing the amount of salt you are adding to your food or being able to limit yourself to 2 biscuits rather than the whole packet.
Consistent exercise
The key word here is consistent!
You don’t have to make the easily fallible commitment of hitting the gym 7 times a week, simply choosing 3 times in the week where you can add some physical activity will help.
And choosing forms of physical activity that you enjoy just makes it more likely that youw ill stick to it. This can be anything from group classes, group sports, dance, cycling, jogging, weight lifting, swimming- whatever tickles your fancy!
Reducing alcohol
Again this doesn’t have to be an extreme change. Cutting down on the amount of alcohol you consume in one evening or reducing the days you are consuming alcohol to just the weekend can help to drastically reduce the amount of units you are taking in in a week.
Stop smoking
If you need any more reason to quit- this is it:
Between 2 to 12 weeks after quitting smoking your circulation will have improved, meaning your blood will be pumping between the heart and the muscles more efficiently.
And 1 year after quitting smoking the risk of heart attack halves. And within 10 years the risk of lung cancer has halved.
Obviously, this change is more extreme than the others, however, there is so much support out there for smoking cessation- have a look at our Smoking and Vaping page here.
For more information on heart health see our Heart Health page.
