Cardiologist: Balanced diet, exercise key to healthy heart year round
Though American Heart Month is wrapping up, that doesn’t mean efforts shouldn’t still be made to keep one of the human body’s hardest working muscles strong and healthy.
Ultimately, it’s important to keep the heart healthy to decrease your risk for cardiovascular disease, according to Howard Brumberg, MD, a cardiologist with Excela Health.
“Following a heart-healthy diet and exercising regularly will help,” Brumberg.
Brumberg said he’s frequently asked what exactly a heart-healthy diet entails, to which he recommends starting with “plenty of fruits and vegetables.”
The diet also includes “minimizing intakes of trans fats which are especially unhealthy and are found in many fast foods, margarine and store-bought baked goods,” he continued, “and eating plenty of fiber and eating lean proteins such as fish, which also contain high concentrations of polyunsaturated fatty acids which have been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease.”
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease fatally impacts around 610,000 people in the United States each year.
“Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women,” the CDC states. They also indicated that about annually, around 735,000 Americans have heart attacks — 525,000 of which are first-time heart attack patients.
The CDC encourages similar healthy habits as noted above, while also noting that it’s a good idea to limit or significantly lower the amount of salt in your diet, as it lowers your overall blood pressure.
“Choosing healthful meal and snack options can help you avoid heart disease and its complications,” the CDC states.
Another part of that healthy lifestyle, though, includes physical activity.
“A reasonable exercise goal for most adults is 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise five to seven days per week,” Brumberg said. “Weight lifting for 30 minutes or more per week has been shown to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.”
Brumberg added that certain lifestyle factors may also play a role in one’s overall heart health.
“For example, it is very important to avoid smoking and excessive alcohol intake as this can most certainly lead to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease as well as other significant medical problems,” he said. “Sudden increases in anxiety and emotional stress can also have a negative cardiac effect and are actually associated with an increased risk of heart attack.”
The CDC states that increased alcohol consumption can lead to high blood pressure, prompting them to recommend that men have no more than two drinks per day, while women are recommended to have only one drink daily.
Overall, Brumberg said heart disease and heart failure are complex things.
“Heart failure commonly occurs with abnormal pumping function due to increased heart muscle stiffness, which can be caused by a variety of factors such as hypertension, valvular problems, arrhythmias as well as coronary disease,” Brumberg said while noting that it’s often referred to as diastolic heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. “The heart is an electro-mechanical pump and needs time to relax in order to fill before pumping blood during the next cardiac cycle.”
“When the heart cannot relax properly, for example due to increased heart muscle stiffness or due to a fast heart rate that would occur during an arrhythmia, cardiac pressures increase which leads to diastolic heart failure,” he continued. “The amount of heart failure in the United States is projected to increase over the next several decades and by 2040 there is an expected 772,000 new cases of heart failure.”
Brumberg acknowledged, however, that significant medical improvements have been made over the last several decades.
“A recent major improvement is the use of novel oral anticoagulants to reduce the risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation,” he said. “These medications do not require intermittent blood level monitoring and have a significantly lower risk of major bleeding events when compared to Warfarin.”