Staying heart smart and healthy.

A few years ago, heart disease was THE leading cause of death in the country. It's now in the same league as obesity. However, that changes very little, as obesity often lead to heart disease, which just makes the argument cyclical.

If you’ve lived life to the fullest – which sometimes or oftentimes means you’ve indulged in a lifestyle that’s not very heart friendly - it may be high time for you to take a long hard look at yourself, especially if you’re getting on in years. It may now be time to look at the South Beach Heart Program. Here are several strategies you can take a look at in order to have a healthier heart.

A Strategy of Prevention
Heart disease is preventable, so it is a good idea to make preventing it from happening to you a top priority. How do you do this? By avoiding activities that increase your risk of heart attack of course.

Stop Smoking – Cigarette smoke contains around thousands of chemicals, most of which can damage your heart and blood vessels on their own. These elements working together, are crippling your heart and arteries. Nicotine also makes your heart work harder by constricting blood vessels and increasing your heart rate and blood pressure. You have to compete smoking completely, because even light smkoers are at significant risk. If you stop, your risk factor drops off the scale.

Drink Moderately - Start cuttting down on the amount of alcholol. Overindulgence with alcohol leads to high blood pressure not to mention being dangerous to your liver. If you are in a social situation, try and drink red wine, which is good for the heart. This should also be done in moderation.

Eat a heart-healthy diet- The eat whatever you like diet you were on during your younger years probably didn’t do so much good for your heart but if you can start healthy eating now, it will still be beneficial for you. Try and eat a diet rich is fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. It's time to reduce fatty milk products and meats that have a high fat content.

You`ve got to get physical
Now that you’ve eliminated activities that are bad for your heart, it’s now time to engage inactivities that are good for it. To make is simple and direct you need to exercise regularly.
Regular exercise whether sports or working out in the gym or your own home helps prevent heart failure by increasing blood flow to your heart, strengthening it in the process. Exercise also lowers your bad cholesterol levels. As a side benefit, exercise will reduce mental stress - also a leading cause of heart disease.

Exercising is also key to maintaining a healthy weight. It is natural that as we age, our metabolism slows down that is why when we were young, we could seemingly eat as much as we want and yet stay fit. Being overweight adds to your heart disease risk factor. Its critical to get your weight lower to a level that is healthy.

Make Check-ups Part of Your Senior Citizen Lifestyle
Another big mistake is NOT having regular doctor appointments. Not paying attention to this, can be very detrimental to your health. Sometimes it is, but sometimes its not. Your doctor may need to prescribe you more prescriptions. Its easy to miss something in your health without regular doctor appointments. Regular checkups will also let you know your actual cholesterol levels so you will know what type of foods to eat and what to avoid, and also what foods you can indulge on.

Following these strategies can help you live a longer, healthier life, but only if you do them all together, not just piecemeal. The sooner you start, the better off you will be.

KNOWING MORE ABOUT RELAXATION TECHNIQUES TO REDUCE BLOOD PRESSURE

HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE EXPLAINED
High blood Pressure is when the arteries carry blood from the heart to the rest of the body with a higher pressure than normal. This condition also refer as “Hypertension”, and according to the medical standards, a normal blood pressure would be at a reading of 120/80, and the high blood pressure will be 140/90, and sometimes  much more higher. The higher the blood pressure, the higher the risk of having diabetes and certain kidney diseases.

THE CAUSES
High blood pressure is mainly cause by obesity and lack of regular exercise; some are cause by family medical history, stressful and sedentary lifestyle and poor eating style.

SYMPTOMS AND RISKS

• Most of the signs of high blood pressure is unnoticeable, and in most cases they will be ignored and consider normal. Some more obvious condition like dizziness, blurred vision, shortness of breath and headache are symptoms of high blood pressure, and should be taken seriously. If you have the symptoms mention above, you might have anxiety and depression problems as well, see the list of symptoms for anxiety and panic attack
• Excessive intake of sodium, aging, certain kidney diseases, atherosclerosis, and diabetes may lead to high blood pressure. Try to avoid bad eating habits and relax the body and mind whenever possible.
• Pregnancy may also be a cause of high blood pressure.
• Extreme high blood pressure will raise the risk of stroke and heart attack, especially when weakened blood vessels that causes aneurysm. Hypertension will lead to loss of vision and disturbed metabolic syndrome, should not be taken lightly.
• Kidney will not function properly if the blood vessels is weakening or damage by high blood pressure.

SOME COMMON TECHNQIUES
Health professionals, doctors and psychotherapists are skilled at and do teach relaxation techniques to reduce blood pressure, but there are many things that you can do on your own to check your blood pressure from rising. Relaxation techniques are meant to increase awareness of your body and refocusing your attention towards a calming thought.

Common relaxation techniques to reduce blood pressure are:

• Relaxing Music
• Exercise or Physical Activity
• Taiji
• Self Hypnosis for Relaxation
• Massage Acupuncture
• Meditation

Let’s look at some of the less common but very effective relaxation methods, use and practice these methods regularly to increase the effect. Although these techniques are not as common, but they are very useful against high blood pressure with more practice.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation. Begin with your toes, make fist with the toes and tense for 5 seconds, then open and relax your toe muscles for 30 seconds, next, move your focus to the legs, asses, tummy, arms, neck, head. Repeat the process few times from toe to head and from head to toe until you feel all of the muscles in your body are relaxed. Remember to deep breathing during the exercise.

Visual Relaxation- This amazing relaxation technique to reduce blood pressure teaches you to visualize mental images of a peaceful and calm situation or place. Try to exercise as many of your senses as you can- sounds, sights, textures and smells. The best way to do this would be to sit at a quiet and calm place, wearing loose cotton clothing. You should be able to close your eyes and focus on the peaceful visions for optimum effect.

Autogenic Relaxation- Autogenic refers to “something that originates within you.”  Both body awareness and visual imagery are used in this technique, to reduce stress. Muscle tension in your body is reduced by repeating self help words or suggestions in your mind to. You have to develop an active imagination system where you need to imagine peaceful surroundings, develop a relaxed breathing and focus on it, or imagine other physical sensations like relaxing your body parts one after the other to master this relaxation technique to reduce blood pressure.

SUMMARY
You need to control the high blood pressure problems, and avoid damaging the arteries that will lead to heart attack and stroke. Practice relaxation techniques will reduce the blood pressure, which is critical in maintaining a healthy mind and body. To cure high blood pressure caused by anxiety and depression, see the anxiety native treatment for more information.