With all that lovey-dovey romantic stuff, I almost forgot that somebody had the smarts to extend the ‘claim to fame’ of February to the heart not only in its romantic version, but also in its actual, pump-in-your-chest version. So I thought I’d give that topic a moment of our time, as well!
Since this is the month for it, heart health has been in the news a lot lately. I found it particularly interesting to hear and read so much about the detrimental effects of sugar on heart health. Isn’t it interesting, that this truth has finally made it to mainstream news.
If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll know that I am very passionate about food. To make a long story short, I have run a fairly health-conscious (although not vegetarian) household for a couple of decades now. Living without much gluten or refined sugar has not been a big deal in my kitchen for a long time now. I think I may start posting a few of the recipes we’ve come up with, what do you think?
In any case, I’d like to get down to basics here for a moment: there are some very simple things that can be done towards a healthy heart, almost completely independently of various ideas about nutrition.
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I often like drinking my water hot, like this morning! Drink lots of water.
- Raise your heart rate 40×3 – not very high, just over 100 beats per minutes (you can do this by going for a swift walk), for a consecutive fourty minutes a day, three times a week.
- Get good quality sleep – eight hours a night, and ideally earlier rather than later.
- And love your life.
In my own life as an entrepreneur, it is often difficult to find a healthy work-life balance. It’s just too easy to work literally 14 hours a day, seven days a week. So my own committment to heart health is to put effort into regaining this balance – in particular, to put more emphasis on getting enough exercise, and high quality sleep.
The first and last of these point, I do already :)
