The Professionals Providing Home Care in Mission Hills Have Tips for Keeping Your Heart Strong and Healthy
Your heart works tirelessly to keep blood flowing through your body. Aging doesn’t always mean that your heart stops pumping efficiently. Pegasus has tips for keeping your heart strong and healthy.
Your heart beats billions of times during your life. It moves millions of gallons of blood through your body. World Heart Day, September 29, is dedicated to helping individuals make heart-healthy choices.
You have a secret weapon for keeping your heart as healthy as possible. Your secret weapon is always available to you. It benefits your heart even if you don’t deploy it until late in life.
The name of your secret weapon is lifestyle. Yes, lifestyle. The same litany of “don’t do that, do this” which you’ve probably heard a zillion times.
Changing or improving your lifestyle habits can be a challenge. The home care professionals at Mission Hills will help. They’ve made many of the same changes themselves and know first hand what’s involved.
Your blood transports everything your body needs to stay alive. Cardiovascular disease is the umbrella term for health issues that impair how your heart functions. Some of those issues, such as your genetic makeup, are unavoidable.
Other issues are a result of:
- Not eating properly
- Not exercising regularly
- Smoking
- Excessive stress
Changing these lifestyle habits is your secret weapon for keeping your heart strong and healthy.
Home Care in Mission Hills Helps You Manage Heart Health
Eating Right
What you eat impacts your health. It’s always your favorite or easiest-to-prepare foods that you’re expected to avoid. It’s not easy.
When you receive home care in Mission Hills, you’ll have experts to help you. Healthy eating is one of their areas of expertise.
They’re knowledgeable about dietary basics such as:
- How to control portion and serving sizes without feeling deprived
- Tasty and healthy ways to add more fruits, vegetables, and grains to meals
- Recipes that cut unhealthy fats and sugars without tasting awful
- Using spices and salt substitutes to add flavor
- Including occasional treats
Home health caregivers assist in food shopping and preparation when needed.
Movement
As the years creep up on you, it gets harder to exercise regularly. But as you know, difficult is not impossible. A Mission Hills home care specialist knows safe ways to keep you moving.
Researchers recommend spending time on four kinds of exercise:
- Endurance, to increase heart rate
- Strength, to make muscles stronger
- Balance, to prevent falls
- Flexibility, to prevent muscle stiffness
A few minutes of each type each day will improve your overall health.
Mission Hills home health specialists assist you with:
- Choosing exercises from each group that fit your level of ability
- Obtaining any equipment needed to perform the exercises safely
- Arranging exercises outside your home, such as in a gym, if appropriate
They provide encouragement and motivation, but won’t push you beyond safe limits.
Tobacco
Study after study has documented the adverse consequences of smoking on your health. Nicotine is especially harmful to your heart. You know you need to quit.
If you need more motivation, consider these ways that the chemicals in tobacco smoke harm your heart:
- Increases the inflammation that causes plaque to clog your arteries (atherosclerosis)
- Damages your blood vessels and causes them to narrow
- Makes your heart lose its normal rhythm and work harder
- Increases your blood pressure
- Increases your “bad” cholesterol and triglycerides
- Makes your blood thicker so it can’t carry oxygen as well
Yes, tobacco smoke from pipes and cigars is just as harmful as smoke from cigarettes.
Once you’re committed to keeping your heart strong and healthy by quitting smoking, help is available. There’s no end to smoking cessation programs. Your home health caregiver can offer guidance in choosing the best program for you.
Stress
If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. All those little annoyances and setbacks mount up. Before you know it, you’re feeling stressed.
A moderate amount of tension is normal for many people. The harm occurs when you’re chronically stressed. Your immune system is weakened, leaving you vulnerable to disease.
When stress revs up your body, you experience:
- An increase in blood pressure
- A faster rate of breathing
- A release of adrenaline
- A “pounding” heart rate
Over time, these factors can lead to damage in your blood vessels and heart.
The negative effects of stress are compounded because you may not eat properly or exercise as the tension increases. You become less able to cope with the underlying issue, further increasing your stress. Home health care helps you break that cycle.
Among other things, your caregiver will:
- Listen when you need to vent
- Teach you how to manage stress
- Provide counseling for you or family members if needed
- Help you find ways to solve the underlying problem
- Strive to keep you from neglecting your health
Just having a compassionate and calm person present can be more important than anything else in alleviating stress.
Keeping your heart strong and healthy is a priority when you receive home care in Mission Hills. Our trained professionals are experienced in providing clients with personalized services. Their goal is to help you live independently for as long as possible.
