to keep your Heart To stay healthy, it is important for you to eat nutritious food, exercise daily, stay stress-free by doing yoga and meditation, quit smoking and get good sleep. Often, your lifestyle The alternatives harm your heart health. Your small decisions or consistent habits can have significant consequences. These include bad habits like irregular sleeping patterns, eating more street or canned food instead of home-cooked food, inactive lifestyle, eating snacks late at night, smoking, drinking alcohol and having too much stress can increase heart-related risks. Is. issues. These habits can pose a serious threat to your overall health.

Times Now Digital spoke to Dr Bipinchandra Bhamre, Consultant Cardiac Surgeon, Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Centre, about lifestyle changes that can impact your heart health. He explained how certain lifestyle habits can lead to health complications like high cholesterol levels (LDL), high blood pressure. heart attackHeart failure, stroke, arrhythmias, angina, coronary artery disease, endocarditis, sudden cardiac arrest, and ischemic heart disease. This is why it becomes important to take proactive steps by modifying your lifestyle habits to keep your heart healthy. These lifestyle modifications can improve your heart function and enhance your quality of life.

Tips for changing your lifestyle to keep your heart healthy

• Manage your stress levels:If you’ve been experiencing a lot of stress recently, it could be a warning sign for your heart health. As stress levels increase over time, a hormone called cortisol increases which is not good for the heart. It becomes important to manage your stress levels. This can be achieved by stress-relieving techniques like meditation, yoga and deep breathing exercises.

• Focus on eating healthy food: Your diet should include heart-healthy foods. Who doesn’t love to enjoy delicious dishes like burgers, chips, fries, cookies, sugary drinks, soda, pizza, pani-puri, vadapav and chocolates? However, have you ever wondered how these delicious foods can negatively impact your heart health? Focus on a diet that includes a variety of choices like vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, pulses, legumes and whole grains. It may help reduce inflammation, bad cholesterol levels and high blood pressure while reducing the risk of heart problems.

• enough sleep: Irregularities in your sleeping patterns like watching serials or movies till midnight or not having a fixed time to sleep can be harmful for your heart. Aim for at least 7 to 8 hours of deep sleep. Prolonged sleep deprivation can increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, inflammation, weakened immune system, weight gain, and diabetes. These are all major risk factors contributing to heart disease. Establishing a regular sleep schedule can help your cardiovascular health.

• remain active: People who rarely engage in physical activity or prefer to remain inactive have a higher risk of being diagnosed with many types of heart diseases. It can have negative effects on your heart by increasing blood sugar levels, bad cholesterol levels, poor blood circulation, inflammation, obesity and poor stamina. Therefore, it becomes important to be active in taking utmost care of your heart. Engaging in physical activities like cycling, walking, running, jogging or swimming for more than 45 minutes can work wonders in keeping you fit and healthy.

• quit smoking:If you are a smoker, quitting is the best decision for you. Smoking can be harmful to your overall health. Over time this can damage your blood vessels, and increase blood pressure levels while increasing heart rate. It can also lead to plaque build-up in your arteries which further causes a condition called atherosclerosis (a disease of chronic inflammation). Quitting smoking can improve blood circulation as well as reduce the risk of many cardiovascular problems.

Get the latest news live on Times Now with breaking news and top headlines from around the world.