To live from your heart is a matter of choice—of choosing a lifestyle filled with happiness, vitality, and balance. We often overlook the complex simplicity with which our bodies are built. It’s hard to believe that an organ as small as our fists can be capable of keeping the entirety of our bodies going! What would happen if our heart were to stop for a ‘heartbeat’?
Heart health is of prime importance to our overall well-being. Let’s get you started on your journey to cardiovascular health with some interesting facts.
Fun Facts About the Human Heart
If you were asked to touch your heart, chances are your hand will instinctively go towards the left side of your chest. You’ll be surprised to know that the heart is actually located at the center of our chest, with a slight tilt towards the left. This tilt is what makes it seem like that the heart is on the left.
1. In a single day, your heart beats about 100,000 times!
2. Your capillaries are so thin that it takes ten of them to come to the thickness of a human hair.
3. There’s about 5.6 liters of blood in your body. This blood circulates through the body thrice in a minute. If we were to measure this in terms of distance, the blood travels 19,000 km in one day.
4. Ever had the moment when you can hear your heartbeat ringing in your ears? The Lub-Dub that you hear is the sound of your heart valves opening and closing.
5. The amount of blood your heart pumps in a minute amounts to approximately 1.5 gallons—that’s 2000 gallons of blood in a day.
6. If you were to line up all the blood vessels in your body, they would stretch out to 60,000 miles.
7. Not all heart diseases are a cause of unhealthy diet or lifestyles, they can also be genetic or hereditary.
8. Staying happy can actually help keep your heart healthy! Laughing reduces stress and relaxes blood vessels, lowering the risk of heart diseases.
9. Your heart will continue beating even when it is removed from your body. The reason is not sorcery; it’s a special electrical conduction system that your heart has.
Exercises for a Strong Heart
Obesity, high cholesterol levels, diabetes are the primary causes leading up to grave heart diseases, strokes, and even heart failure. A healthy lifestyle characterized by a nutritious diet, exercise, and stress-free environment is key to mastering cardiovascular health. Here are some exercises you should focus on for a happy heart:
Strength Training: Strength training involves working with different weights for improved heart resistance. The training focuses on improving muscle mass and burning fat. Exercises include push-ups, weight-lifting, squats, working with resistance bands, and the like.
Improving Circulation with Aerobic Exercises: Aerobic exercises are what get your heart pumping. Examples include swimming, brisk walking, cycling, and hiking. These exercises lower blood pressure, regulate blood glucose, and reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Flexibility: Although flexibility training does not have any direct impact on your heart health, it is crucial for joint mobility and muscle strength. Further, the emphasis that practices such as yoga place on breathing, help improve blood pressure, resting heart rate, and stress management.
In addition to a dedicated workout routine, it is important to stay active throughout the day. You can incorporate movement into your daily routine through household chores, gardening, and other such activities.
Must-Avoid Habits
While engaging in activities that improve your cardiovascular health, it is important to be cautious of certain habits that can hinder your progress. Avoid these habits to lower your risk of heart diseases:
- Smoking is a big no-no. Cigarette smoke not only damages your nerves but also lowers blood oxygen levels, resulting in increased blood pressure.
- Consuming empty calories or a nutrition-deficit diet. Limit your intake of alcohol and foods high in salt, sugar, carbs, and fats. Such foods lead to high cholesterol levels and artery blockage.
- Skipping sleep. Proper rest and stress management is integral to maintaining a healthy heart.
- Do not be a couch potato. Sitting all day increases the risk of heart disease. Incorporate some movement into your routine in the form of light stretching, breaks, short walks.
- Avoiding trips to the hospital. Even if you follow a healthy diet and exercise regularly, it is important to get your heart health monitored periodically. Unlike physical symptoms or hurt that are evidently visible, it is hard to immediately pinpoint any risk factors in matters of the heart.
It’s never too late to choose to make the right decisions for your health. Remember , the choices that you make today will manifest in the coming decades. You have the choice to either live an old age of comfort or tangled in diseases.
FAQs
Question. What are some healthy food snacks?
Answer. Although we’re drawn towards convenient, packaged, and easy to eat foods as snacks, a healthy snack is defined by its nutritional value. Some healthy food snacks options would be wholegrain crackers, popcorn, beetroot or kale chips, fruits or vegetables with cottage cheese, yogurt, chia pudding, unsweetened dried fruits such as plums, dates, figs, etc.
Question. What are some heart health symptoms?
Answer. Heart diseases do not develop overnight—we often overlook several symptoms. Some heart health symptoms that you should look out for include dizziness or feeling light headed, persistent chest pain that also spreads to the arms, heartburn, sweating, irregular heart beat, shortness of breath, fatigue or confusion, and swelling in the feet or ankles.