Cardiovascular♥ health with Lifestyle Medicine🌿Part 1- Activity

 

Today we will look at the benefit of activity 🤸🏽- pillar 1 for heart and blood vessel health, and over the following 5 weeks, I will discuss how other pillars of lifestyle medicine influence this. 

Heart and blood vessel health are crucially important for long term quality of life. I want you to remember something very important, up to 80% of heart disease can be prevented with lifestyle medicine intervention. You have the power to change your direction right now, with Lifestyle medicine intervention. If someone has heart disease, they will always need their family doctor 🧑‍⚕️to be the primary manager but seeking lifestyle medicine intervention can be a crucial change in direction of chronic heart and blood vessel disease progression. Doctors have most likely talked about these recommendations made here, but I want readers to understand them better. 

There is no such thing as too late or too soon to intervene with Lifestyle medicine🌿 management of the heart 💓. The consequences of not looking after our heart health bring to mind two of the major things people think of regarding their cardiovascular (heart and blood vessel) health - these are heart attacks and stroke. 

There is a large body of evidence demonstrating that the danger of heart attacks, stroke, and events such as angina pain (heart pain from oxygen deprivation and reduced blood flow to the heart) and claudication pain (oxygen deprivation causing fatigue, pain, aching and uncomfortable sensation in the feet, calves, buttocks or hips, and sometimes the arms and shoulders), can be significantly reduced, better managed or even reversed. 

The complexities of the reasons for the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) are beyond the scope of this blog, but the rewards for practicing Lifestyle medicine pillars can be almost instantaneous. As mentioned earlier, the ASLM pillars of LSM include physical activity, diet and nutrition, smoking cessation, alcohol harm reduction, sleep and stress, social connection.  Practicing all of them is what you really deserve, that is true self-compassion 😇! 

Today we talk about doing more physical activity. 

Blood vessels are lined with endothelial cells, and these cells play a huge role in the quality of our heart and blood vessel function. The quality of these cells is influenced by the exercise and activity ⛹🏽🚴🏽🤸🏽🧘‍♂️🚶🏽🏃🏽we do, causing an increased heart rate leading to faster travelling blood cells causing shearing effects on these endothelial cells, which heavily influences their health. When we become inactive, we add to the increased the burden of heart disease to over 6% globally🌎. It has been calculated that the level of inactivity globally has risen to over 80% of adolescents and 27% of adults. By meeting the minimum requirements of exercise, available in my last blog on activity, or your country’s heart ♥association’s guidelines, you are strengthening the muscles of the heart. Even if your heart does not appear to show any signs of symptoms relating to cardiovascular diseases, exercise can help to lower your blood pressure, and reduce the danger of developing Diabetes, which in turn can effect your cardiovascular health. Another important factor is lowering levels of inflammation throughout the body. There is a test that can measure for this presence, including High sensitivity C-reactive protein testing, which can measure very small changes in the CRP levels in your body, which helps detect the danger of further heart and blood vessel disease progression. 

Exercise🚶🏽 is good for increasing High density lipoproteins (HDL) which you can refer to as your good cholesterol, that helps bring down your Triglycerides (or circulating blood fat).

It is important to point out that the presence of Atherosclerotic plaques or clots is related to increased CRP levels, as higher rates of inflammation can lead to their production and presence. 

Decreasing your body weight will also help to lower your CVD risk, another benefit of exercise and most effective in conjunction with caloric restriction.  Stress 🧘‍♂️hormones are reduced by exercise, an added benefit to allow less strain on the heart. Increased availability of oxygen to your heart muscle (myocardium) leads to less burden on the heart.  

In summary, if you could put exercise in a tablet to help your heart health, everyone would want it, proving that exercise really is a medicine. If you can combine resistance training with aerobic training (i.e. walking🚶🏽, jogging 🏃🏽, swimming🏊🏽 or cycling🚴🏽) you can achieve the best combination of benefits, according to the American heart association (AHA) and the American college of sports medicine (ACSM). Never underestimate the value of looking after your heart and blood vessels, allowing the wonderful orchestration of delivering blood to every organ and tissue in your body. 

Enjoy your new direction in activity and exercise! Bye for now 🏃🏽