World Heart Day: Here's What You Should Do To Reduce The Risk Of Cardiovascular Disease Later In Life

Cardiovascular health is the wellbeing of your heart and blood vessels. Cardiovascular diseases are one of the common causes of death in the old age and main reason is the cholesterol deposition in the blood vessels supplying blood to heart muscles and other organs of the body. The main risk factors for the blockage of heart vessels are high cholesterol and high triglycerides. However, the main causes of these are obesity, smoking, diabetes early in life, hypertension, family history of heart disease, sedentary lifestyle and bad eating habits like eating a lot of fatty, fried food and food rich is carbohydrates, etc. Out of these risk factors, other than family history, rest of the risk factors can be easily controlled by making few lifestyle changes early in life.

World Heart Day 2021: Follow thee tips to ensure a healthy heart

It is a misconception that cardiac disease starts late in life. Actually, the cholesterol deposition starts during childhood only, but it is very slow at that age and then rate of deposition become fast later in life especially if an unhealthy lifestyle is maintained.

It is paramount that you should maintain a healthy lifestyle as early as possible in life for your heart health. A healthy lifestyle can significantly reduce the risk of heart attack later in life.

In India, studies have reported that cardiovascular disease contributed to 23% of total deaths and 32% of adult deaths in the last decade. The prevalence of coronary artery disease has increased from 1% to 9-10% in urban population and from 1% to 4-6% in rural population over past 50 years. This has led to a sort of epidemic of coronary artery disease and the worrying part is that, now it is affecting more and more of younger population due to unhealthy life styles and stressful daily life along with other contributing factors as mentioned earlier.

1. Go for a morning walk daily and walk for at least 45 mins to 1 hour. This will increase the cardiac workload and burn the extra calories which will keep your weight under check and keeps you fit.

2. Maintain a healthy lifestyle and make a routine of daily exercise, it can be yoga, aerobics, gym, swimming, cycling, etc. Daily routine also helps you to relax and strengthen your heart.

3. Maintaining a good and healthy eating habit by avoiding fatty and fried food which are high in cholesterol and reducing the consumption of food rich in carbohydrate which increases your weight and thus increases your risk of heart disease.

4. Avoid smoking. Smoking is among the major risk factors of cardiac disease, the nicotine in the smoke cause inflation and damages the inner side of the blood vessels increasing the blood deposition everywhere and hence causing serious issues early in life.

5. Keeping blood sugar under control if you are diabetic. Diabetes is another major risk factor for heart disease. The cholesterol deposition rate leading to blockage of blood vessels is high in diabetes. But diabetes can be controlled by simply maintaining a healthy lifestyle and keeping weight, sugar and diet in control.

6. Along with maintaining a healthy lifestyle it is very important to go for routine check-ups, especially if you have a family history of heart disease. Follow your doctor's advice sincerely and be in touch with your physician regularly.

If you follow these simple steps, they will go a long way to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease in early stage of life, delaying them to later in life.

(Dr Yugal Kishore Mishra, Head Of Cardiac Sciences And Chief Cardio Vascular Surgeon, Manipal Hospital, Dwarka, New Delhi)

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