Your Heart Age: And How it Affects Your Health
For people over the age of 30, the NHS are strongly urging people to take an online test that helps to find out their heart age, which will help to indicate if the person taking the test are at risk of suffering a heart attack and stroke, and while the test itself is not diagnostic – and as such is not going to be able to magically decide if you are going to be having a heart attack, it will certainly be a well needed wake up call if the results come back bad.
With unhealthy lifestyles putting 4 in 5 adults at risk of an early death from a heart attack or stroke, and poor diets and smoking being the leading causes, it is strongly suggested by the NHS for you to make an effort to look after yourself, which includes eating healthy, quitting smoking and endeavouring to do exercise when possible.
Obesity, poor diet, a lack of exercise and high blood pressure are significant risk factors for the heart that can be changed.
Lowering Heart Age – Improving Heart Health
There are many things you can do, some which are quite simple and can be done daily, that will help to exponentially improve your heart health…
- Get Active and exercise often – helping to burn off fat and keep muscles active.
- Give up smoking, which can be very difficult, the NHS offers some useful resources to help quit smoking.
- Eat more fibre, great sources of fibre can be gotten as quickly as breakfast with some bran based cereal
- Manage your weight, fat can be stored around the heart and will generally increase blood pressure
- Cut down on salts and saturated fats – these will help your heart and lower your blood pressure
- Eat your greens – having your 5 a day will help to massively improve your overall health
- Drink less alcohol – which like many other things bad for you, will make negative changes to your blood pressure
- always read labels on food and drink – understand exactly what you are putting in your body.
- Avoid energy drinks, especially if you are under age – energy drinks are just not worth the heart strain
The reason you want a healthy blood pressure is that it makes your resting heart rate naturally lower, and ensures there is less strain on your heart to move the blood around your body.
What is worrying is that 78% of the near 2,000,000 people that have participated in the quiz, all of them have a heart age higher than their actual age, which puts them at a higher risk of heart issues in the future, such as a heart attack or stroke, this is especially prevalent for the 5% of the people who took the quiz to find out their heart health was over 10 years higher than their actual age.
This test, which is backed by the NHS, Stroke Association and the British Heart Association has the potential to help millions of people around the UK.
The Next Steps
This test doesn’t just help you to understand the health of your heart, but also give you helpful steps and life style changes you can take to improve your heart health, including…
- increase the amount of fruit and vegetables in your diet – increasing your portions from 3 to 5 can help in lowering your risk of suffering from a heart attack or stroke
- doing weekly exercise – with the recommended amount of exercise to do being just under 2 hours a week.
- Quitting smoking – after just one year of being cigarette free, your risk of heart disease is half.
You only have one heart, and it is very important to keep it in good shape, so feel free to do the test, and see where you need to improve!