Do Your Heart Good!
Get heart healthy tips from OhioHealth.
OhioHealth is a not-for-profit organization of hospitals and healthcare services including Riverside Methodist Hospital, Grant Medical Center, Doctors Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital.
At OhioHealth and Do Your Heart Good, people with different lifestyles learn a variety of ways to take care of their heart. Eating well, living well and adding fitness and exercise to your day, all greatly reduce your heart risk factors including high blood pressure and high cholesterol. With OhioHealth, it's easy to make sense of all the heart healthy information out there.
Take good nutrition for example - do you know how to incorporate healthy eating into your life? OhioHealth provides healthy and delicious snack ideas, menus, recipes, dining out tips and eating strategies to reduce fat and cholesterol - and still have meals your family will eat and enjoy. If weight loss and reducing your Body Mass Index is your goal, take our nutrition quiz, then select from a wide variety of easy traditional and ethnic recipes that are add whole grain to your diet or are high in fiber and low in fat that you can easily make at home. Nutrition experts at the McConnell Heart Health Center and clinical dieticians at Grant Medical Center and Doctors Hospital share their personal eating tips, menu and ingredient substitutions and ways to eat healthy at restaurants. Soon, you'll see your waist measurement decrease and you'll feel better and have more energy.
OhioHealth helps you get moving! Even 30 minutes of exercise activity each day can do wonders for your body's fitness. All forms of movement can increase your fitness level. And, regular exercise can reduce stress and high blood pressure - two risk factors for heart disease. Have you been a couch potato and are now ready to start a fitness routine? Visit us for some new exercise ideas. Exercise doesn't have to take a lot of time or involve expensive exercise equipment. OhioHealth's Do Your Heart Good website is your source for practical exercise tips and classes for people of any age. Personal trainers and exercise physiologists from Grant Health and Fitness Center and McConnell Heart Health Center in Columbus, Ohio are ready to design a personal fitness program for you.
Heart disease may be the leading cause of death for both men and women, but that doesn't mean you have to be a victim. You can't change some of your heart risks factors, such as age, race and family history, but you can adopt lifestyle changes and manage your lifestyle habits to reduce stress and tension, reduce blood pressure and become more heart healthy. Some important ways you can improve your heart health are to eat well, incorporate exercise into your daily routine, reduce stress, maintain a healthy weight and get regular health screenings. No amount of smoking or tobacco use is safe, and exposure to secondhand smoke is more dangerous than you think. Chronic or frequent intervals of high stress are also harmful to your health. You can choose how you react to a stressful situation and adopt tension-relieving strategies and practices that you can do everyday to help you relax.
A heart risk assessment is one of the best first steps you can do to identify your risk factors for heart disease. Then, visit your doctor. If you don't have one, OhioHealth can help you find a physician. When you know your numbers and monitor them over time, you have the information you need to track your progress in improving heart health. Your BMI, lipid profile and cholesterol, blood pressure and even ejection fraction are all indicators of your risk for heart attack, stroke and other heart-related diseases and conditions.
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