Ways to ensure a Healthy Heart 
Your cardiovascular risk is one of the most important factors in remaining happy and healthy throughout life. Your heart is responsible for pumping blood about your entire body and even if its function is weakened, the ability of your brain and all the other organs in your body to carry out their individual roles will be limited.
There are several obvious ways to ensure heart health that we all already know. You are certainly aware that maintaining a program of aerobic exercise every week is essential. While gym based exercise programmes are excellent, simply starting with 30 minutes or more of exercise is an excellent start to heart health. See a practitioner if you need help to stop smoking.
Diet is also important. Keeping to a healthy weight by limiting your intake of saturated fats and other high calorie foods is important. So, too, is ensuring a high intake of fruit and vegetables as well as nuts and seeds for the vital nutrients the heart needs. Foods that have been proven to be particularly beneficial to the heart include fish, three times per week, garlic, red wine in moderation and dark chocolate.
Relaxation and recreation is also important to maintaining the health of the heart. This can be structured in the form of meditation, yoga, tai chi or relaxation CDs or simply enjoyed as soaking in a bath or relaxing in the park, watching the clouds drift by.
Two other key areas should also be noted. First, keeping healthy teeth is important. Dental problems such as low grade infections have been associated with increased heart risk.
Secondly, there is happiness. Depression is now considered to be a cardiac risk factor such that the happier your life, the healthier it is likely to be as well. How appropriate that the heart, eternally associated with love, requires happiness to remain healthy.
Dr Lily Tomas, M.B.B.S., BSc(Med.) is an expert in Integrative Medicine. Each month she shares information to assist in wellness.
