Achieving and maintaining heart health requires eight essential commitments from people who want their heart and blood vessels to function as well as possible and for as long as possible, according to the American Heart Association.
Each of the checklist’s actions is either a behavior or a factor that affects heart health, which refers to how well the 13 components of the heart function, in addition to the arteries, veins, and capillaries.
The commitments, which the American Heart Association calls Life’s Essential 8, consists of four factors. They are controlling cholesterol and managing blood sugar, blood pressure and weight. Those factors are influenced by four critical behaviors – refraining from tobacco use, being active, eating well and getting adequate sleep.
After the introduction of those eight measures and their scoring algorithm, researchers found that only 1 out of 5 U.S. residents had optimal heart health. Less than half of 1% of the people surveyed scored 100 on Life’s Essential 8, the same survey found.
Those findings coincided with the Heart Association adding sleep as an essential component of heart health. Sleep affects blood pressure elevation levels and plays a role in hormone levels that control critical bodily functions. And people who get inadequate sleep are at higher risk of having a heart attack.
To achieve optimal heart health, it’s essential to understand how each metric affects the cardiovascular system.
Eat Well, Manage Weight
This behavior and factor go hand-in-hand. Consuming more calories than the body needs or expends contributes to weight gain. The heart’s primary function is to send blood to all parts of the body – from hair follicles to heels.
And the larger a body is, the harder the heart must work to pump blood throughout the body. The heart is a muscle, which means the harder it works, the larger it will become. Specifically, working harder increases the size of the left ventricle and can cause irregular heartbeat and high blood pressure, Brown University Health reported.
Consequently, eating foods that are low in fat, sugar and processed ingredients can contribute to improving and maintaining heart health. Additionally, medical studies suggest that calorie reduction can lead to a longer lifespan and a slower aging process. A heart-healthy diet should include whole foods, lean meats, fruits, vegetables and healthy oils, such as olive oil.
Exercise Regularly
Because the heart is a muscle, moving more vigorously and regularly is essential to keep the muscle healthy. Elevating the heart rate above its resting level conditions it to send blood and oxygen to muscles efficiently, and it will lower cholesterol, which is one of the factors influencing heart health, an exercise physiologist at MD Anderson Center explained.
Exercise duration and intensity recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity everyday for children ages 6 to 17; two days a week of strength training and 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise for people ages 18 to 64; and people older than 65 should balance activity to the routine recommended for the 18 to 64 age group.
Avoid Tobacco, Control Cholesterol
Smoking damages blood vessels. It makes them narrower and harder, and that can lead to atherosclerosis, a condition in which sticky plaque, consisting of cholesterol, fat and blood cells, clogs the arteries. Inhaling tobacco disrupts the heart’s rhythm and elevates bad cholesterol, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute reported.
If a person’s diet is rich in fat, and they don’t exercise, which lowers fat and cholesterol levels, and they smoke, the risks of heart disease become greater. The smoking damage isn’t the result of only cigarettes. Inhaling nicotine from vaping and e-cigarettes has the same harmful effect, the American Heart Association stated.
Get Adequate Sleep
Sleep allows bodies to recover and rest. Beyond that, inadequate sleep contributes to obesity, which increases the workload of the heart. The details of how insufficient sleep affects cravings, hormones and overall health are explained here.
Manage Blood Sugar
Elevated blood sugar levels affect arteries and blood flow in a manner similar to inhaling tobacco. It contributes to the stiffening of arteries by causing plaque to accumulate.
The correlation between diabetes and heart disease is so strong that even when blood sugar levels are managed, the risk of heart disease remains, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Manage Blood Pressure
The American Heart Association recommends maintaining a blood pressure reading of less than 120/80. Blood pressure is the amount of force blood exerts on artery walls when the heart pumps blood through the body. Consistently having blood pressure above those readings increases the risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure and heart disease, the CDC warns.
Elevated blood pressure, or hypertension, can cause heart emergencies by making arteries rigid. That cuts off blood flow to the heart, causing a heart attack, in which the heart starts to die because it is not receiving enough oxygen.
A stroke can result if the strained arteries that transport oxygen and blood to the brain burst or become blocked because of hypertension. Heart failure describes the condition in which the heart cannot pump adequate blood and oxygen to other organs.
Life’s Essential 8 provides a roadmap to preserving, attaining and maintaining heart health. You will find information to support those goals on the Health and Wellness Nutrition & Fitness page, the Aging Well section and the Sleep page, which explore how to give your body the restorative rest it needs for a healthier heart.
