It is not always easy to live a healthy heart – long working days and unusual working hours do not make it easy to pay attention to a balanced diet and do a lot of sport. And yet you can take many small steps to protect your heart without radically changing your life.
As a cardiologist, I speak to people every day about how to protect their hearts, either before they have heart disease or after they have had a heart attack or developed an arrhythmia. Much of what we doctors then advise seems very difficult for most people to implement and integrate into their everyday lives. “How do you really do that?” patients often ask me in this situation.
Michael Böhm is Director of the Clinic for Cardiology, Angiology and Internal Intensive Care Medicine at the Saarland University Hospital and spokesman for the German Society of Cardiology. He has been taking care of patients with acute and chronic heart diseases on a daily basis for over 35 years. He also conducts intensive research in the fields of heart failure, high blood pressure and atherosclerosis.
First and foremost: do not smoke! Of course, the vast majority of smokers know how harmful nicotine consumption is for the body – not just for the heart. We doctors are aware that giving up smoking is still very difficult, which is why there are numerous support services that can help. I can only advise everyone not to give up on the way to a smoke-free life, even if it doesn’t work on the first try.
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Getting enough exercise is the next step toward healthy living. In the profession as a doctor, you move a lot compared to people with a pure desk job, but you should still make sure to become even more active in everyday life. This can also be easily achieved through active everyday activities: Simply taking the stairs instead of taking the elevator or not sitting on the desk chair during a long phone call, but walking around the room can help a lot.
We know from studies how unhealthy sitting for a long time is for the heart and blood vessels. It is therefore a matter of repeatedly creating small islands of movement during the working day. Regular sports units should of course be inserted. And it is not even necessary to do high-performance sports or to push your personal limits every day.
Just 15 minutes of brisk exercise twice a day reduces the cardiovascular risk by 15 percent. An intensive walk, a short bike ride or a session on the exercise bike is enough. Such activities can often be easily integrated into the lunch break and then have the pleasant effect that you return to work fresh, happy and relaxed after the break.
For many patients, diet is the most sensitive issue when it comes to cardiovascular prevention. No more steak, chocolate or burgers? Yes, of course! No one needs to chastise themselves to protect their hearts. Everyone – including preventive physicians – likes to go to a restaurant and enjoy a glass or two of wine with their meal. Such opportunities are not the problem either.
The keyword is balance. Of course, anyone who eats fast food or a whole bag of chips every day and drinks sugary lemonade or cocoa with it is not doing their heart any good. However, if you generally follow a balanced diet with lots of fruit and vegetables, healthy fats (preferably olive oil), lots of fish and whole grain products and omit too much red meat, processed fats and convenience products that are usually high in fat and sugar, you will not get heart disease , just because he once treated himself to a burger.
If you stick to the principle of balance and stay within a normal range with your body mass index, you are already doing a lot of things right.
What I think is particularly important are preventive medical check-ups. From the age of 35, every person in Germany is entitled to a check-up at their family doctor every three years. I always urge you to realize this, and I often bring this up with my family and friends.
Preventive medical check-ups can detect elevated cholesterol or blood pressure levels at an early stage. The insidious thing about high blood pressure and high cholesterol is that patients do not suffer from it. On the contrary: people with high blood pressure usually even feel fit. It is more likely that at the beginning of antihypertensive therapy, the well-being decreases somewhat and those affected feel exhausted until the body has adjusted to the new, healthier values.
Both hypertension and lipid management are critical to preventing the development of heart disease. Fortunately, we have a variety of medications available to positively influence these pre-existing conditions.
For me, this pillar of prevention is the most important one. With 15 minutes at the doctor’s office, everyone can make an essential contribution to their own heart health!
In summary, it can be said: With a few balanced measures and little effort, everyone can effectively protect the heart and vascular system despite an active and work-intensive everyday life!
