Healthy diet and lifestyle

Your GP says you need to make some changes in your life.  You need to adopt a healthy diet, exercise a little and stop smoking. Your GP has also prescribed some medication and you're wondering: "Why can't medicine alone do the trick? Does lifestyle really make a difference?"

The truth about lifestyle and heart disease

The truth is, medicine won't cure heart disease, though it can certainly help control it. That means your lifestyle does matter - a lot.

For starters it's likely that some aspects of your lifestyle may have put you at risk of heart disease. These are called risk factors. Here's a list of common risk factors for heart disease:

• Smoking tobacco
• Having high blood pressure
• Being overweight
• Having unhealthy blood fat and cholesterol levels
• Having diabetes
• Being physically inactive
• Being over 55 years old for men and over 65 years old for women
• Having family members who had heart disease or a heart attack early in life: under 55 for your father or brother; under 65 for your mother or sister

There are some heart disease risk factors you can't control such as your age or your parents’ health problems. However some risk factors are related to your lifestyle such as smoking, being overweight and having an unhealthy diet. These lifestyle factors may have helped contribute to your heart disease. And these same risk factors will continue to make your heart disease get worse.

Luckily the opposite is true as well. Adopting a healthy diet and a healthier lifestyle can improve your health, even if you already have high blood pressure or other forms of heart disease. Here's what a healthy lifestyle can do for you:

• Lower your blood pressure
• Lower your bad cholesterol and triglyceride (blood fat) levels
• Ease the stress on your heart
• Lower your risk of heart attack
• Lower your risk of stroke
• Prolong your life

Choosing a healthy diet and lifestyle can even help your medicines work more effectively. In some cases you might even be able to reduce or eliminate some medications.

But what exactly is a lifestyle that promotes your heart’s health? And how do you start to make changes towards one? Let's take a closer look at seven aspects of your lifestyle where changes can make a huge difference to your heart’s health:

• Smoking
• Body weight
• Diet
• Use of salt
• Exercise
• Alcohol
• Stress control

Smoking: for your heart's sake, cut it out!

Smoking damages your heart and blood vessels. Here's how:

• Nicotine from cigarettes tightens your blood vessels. This causes your blood pressure to rise and makes your heart work harder.
• Smoking lowers the amount of oxygen and increases the amount of poisonous carbon monoxide in your blood. Your heart ends up needing more oxygen but has less ability to get it. This increases the chances of having a heart attack.
• You might think you're safe if you smoke low-tar or low-nicotine cigarettes. But any kind of smoking can lead to heart attacks.
• Even if you're not a smoker but breathe in smoke from those around you (second-hand smoke), you're at risk.