When you’re at the gym, you work hard to make sure all your muscle groups get a good workout regularly so your body remains balanced and strong. There is one muscle, however, that you might be forgetting — your heart! During an average lifetime, the heart beats about 2.5 billion times and pushes millions of gallons of blood to every part of the body. This blood carries oxygen, nutrients, cells, hormones, and many other compounds that keep us alive. Your blood also carries away waste products and other toxins that could harm us.

Considering the heart’s nonstop work schedule, it’s amazing that it functions so perfectly, for so many years, for so many people. This is especially astonishing when you think about all the things people do to damage their hearts, like eating the wrong foods and skipping workouts at the gym. Even if we do everything right, we still must battle issues that we can’t control, like disease and genetics.

In this blog, we’ll list some ways that you can protect and improve your heart health, both outside and inside our Thornton, CO, gym.

What Makes Our Hearts Unhealthy?

When your heart is healthy, its arteries are elastic and smooth. Over time, however, through a combination of lifestyle factors, genetics, and environment, the heart becomes diseased and can’t do its job as well as it used to. The most common heart issue is called coronary artery disease (CAD), which is the buildup of plaque in the heart’s arteries, making them stiff and narrow. As the plaque grows within the walls of the arteries, blood flow to the heart is limited. The narrowed arteries can slowly starve the heart of blood, or they can rupture and cause a blood clot. This leads to extremely serious cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and strokes.

What Does Heart Disease Feel Like?

There is a common misconception that an unhealthy heart and heart failure will give you obvious signs like chest pain and loss of consciousness, but this is not always true. You can develop heart disease without any symptoms at all for years, and when you do feel it, the symptoms can seem subtle. You might experience any of the following with heart failure and heart attack:

• Shortness of breath
• Swelling in your feet or ankles
• Persistent coughing or wheezing
• Nausea
• Sweating
• Fatigue
• Lightheadedness
• Pain or discomfort in one or both arms
• Pain in your neck, back, shoulder, or jaw
• Discomfort in your chest that feels like an aching, burning, numbness, pressure, squeezing, or heaviness

What Causes Coronary Artery Disease?

CAD is caused by cholesterol-containing deposits, known as plaque, that build up in the major blood vessels that supply the heart. This plaque buildup can begin in childhood and slowly develop over decades. Often, people don’t know they have a problem until the blockage causes a heart attack.

Here are the risk factors that can lead to coronary artery disease:

1. Age – The risk for coronary artery disease increases as you get older.
2. Sex – Men are more likely to get coronary artery disease than women, but women’s risk increases after menopause.
3. Family history – If a close relative developed coronary artery disease (especially before the age of 55), then your risk will be higher.
4. Genetics – Your genetic makeup might cause your liver to make too much of the cholesterol that causes plaque buildup, or your cells might not remove cholesterol from your blood efficiently.
5. High stress – Excess stress can damage your arteries and worsen other risk factors.
6. Poor diet – Eating too much saturated fat, trans fat, sugar, and salt can increase your risk for coronary artery disease.
7. Smoking – Smoking or breathing second-hand smoke increases a person’s risk of coronary artery disease.
8. High blood cholesterol levels – High levels of cholesterol, particularly LDL cholesterol, in your blood can increase the formation of plaque in your arteries.
9. Diabetes – Diabetes and insulin resistance is linked to an increased risk of coronary artery disease.
10. Being overweight or obese – Carrying excess weight heightens other risk factors like type 2 diabetes.
11. Lack of physical activity – Not exercising enough and a sedentary lifestyle are associated with coronary artery disease and some of its risk factors.
12. Alcohol use – Drinking too much alcohol can damage the heart muscle and worsen other risk factors for coronary artery disease.
13. Sleep apnea – This condition causes you to breathe irregularly while you sleep, which can reduce your blood oxygen levels and strain your arteries and heart.
14. High triglycerides – High levels of this type of fat in the blood can raise the risk of coronary artery disease, especially in women.
15. Autoimmune diseases – Inflammatory conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis come with an increased risk of coronary artery disease.

What Can I Do to Keep My Heart Healthy?

Thankfully, there are many steps you can take to reduce your risk of CAD, even if it runs in your family. If you’re concerned about heart disease, create a plan to keep your heart healthy by incorporating the following tips into your life and by consulting with your doctor.

Monitor and Manage Your Cholesterol

Cholesterol makes the plaque deposits that lead to coronary artery disease, so it’s only logical that monitoring and managing the cholesterol levels in your blood can help you reduce these dangerous deposits.

So, what is cholesterol, anyway? Cholesterol is a waxy substance in your blood that your body needs to make certain hormones and vitamin D. It also helps with digestion. Your body makes its own cholesterol in your liver, and you also ingest cholesterol with certain foods. High cholesterol levels can be something you inherit, but it also can be caused by unhealthy lifestyle choices that you can control through diet, regular exercise, and in more serious cases, prescribed medication.

Cholesterol travels through your blood by attaching itself to proteins, a combination called “lipoproteins.” There are two types of lipoproteins in your blood, one “good” and the other “bad”:

• Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) – This is the “bad” cholesterol that builds up in the walls of your arteries, making them narrow and hard.
• High-density lipoprotein (HDL) – This is the “good” cholesterol that picks up excess cholesterol in the blood and takes it to your liver.

If you’re an adult with no risk factors for heart disease, you should get your cholesterol tested every five years. If your cholesterol is high or you have risk factors, your doctor might recommend more frequent tests.

Watch Your Diet

By adjusting your diet, you can help prevent the high cholesterol that leads to heart disease. Once you know which foods to eat and which to avoid, you’ll make good progress toward a heart-healthy diet:

• Limit the amount of salt (sodium) you consume
• Eat a lot of fresh, frozen, or canned fruits and vegetables
• Eat more whole grains
• Use oils that are high in monounsaturated fats like olive oil and canola oil
• Eat more polyunsaturated fats that are found in certain fish as well as avocados, nuts, and seeds
• Eat more foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids like salmon, mackerel, herring, flaxseed, walnuts, and soybeans
• Choose low-fat protein sources like lean meat (less than 10% fat), poultry, fish, low-fat dairy, and eggs
• Substitute animal protein with plant protein like soy burgers, beans, peas, and lentils
• Avoid bacon fat, gravy, and nondairy creamers
• Avoid fried and breaded foods
• Avoid creamy sauces and fruit packed in heavy syrup
• Add less butter, margarine, and shortening to your cooking
• Limit the amount of refined, processed, and fast foods you eat
• Limit or avoid cakes, cookies, pies, white bread, and high-fat snack crackers
• Drink alcohol in moderation, or avoid drinking alcohol at all
• Control your portion sizes to avoid eating too many calories and gaining weight

Exercise

Since your heart is a muscle, it gets stronger and healthier when you exercise it, just like all your other muscles! It’s never too late to start exercising for heart health, and you don’t need any athletic ability or talent. And, once you get going, you’ll find that it’s tough to stop. Plus, exercise really pays off, as those who don’t exercise are almost twice as likely to get heart disease compared to active folks. In addition to making your heart stronger, regular exercise can help you lower your blood pressure, burn calories, lose weight, reduce your LDL “bad” cholesterol, and increase your HDL “good” cholesterol.

To boost your heart health, you should aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise weekly. This breaks down to about 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. If you’re a beginner, you can build up slowly to this amount. As you get more experienced, you can do longer and more challenging workouts.

The first step is to decide what exercises you like to do, because if you choose an exercise you enjoy, you’re more likely to stick to it. Also, you don’t have to pick just one exercise. It’s actually better for your body — and more fun — if you switch things up.

Your exercise plan should include these types of exercise:

• Aerobic — Also known as cardio or cardiovascular exercise, this includes running, jogging, biking, swimming, dancing, aerobics, or walking. For more variety, try playing pickleball or join our other classes at AFAC. You can also get aerobic exercise by using a treadmill, elliptical trainer, stairstepper, or rowing machine at our gym. You should move fast enough to breathe harder and raise your heart rate, but also be able to talk to someone while doing it.
• Strength training — This type of exercise includes lifting weights and using weight machines, resistance bands, and your own body weight (i.e. pushups, sit-ups, and planks).
• Stretching — Stretching exercises will help you remain more flexible and functional as you age so that you can keep exercising and not become sedentary.

Finally, always pay attention to how you feel when you work out. Chances are, if your doctor gave you the green light to exercise, then you should be fine. However, you should get immediate medical help if you feel pain or pressure in your chest, break into a cold sweat, feel dizzy or lightheaded, are very tired, or have trouble breathing.

Manage Stress

Stress causes the release of a hormone called cortisol, and high levels of cortisol can increase blood cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, and triglycerides, which are all risk factors for heart disease. Plus, people who experience a lot of stress — whether it’s from poor sleeping habits, worrying too much, or working at a demanding job — may smoke or choose other unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Luckily, you can reduce the negative effects of stress on your heart and body by:

• Getting plenty of exercise
• Building a strong support system
• Identifying situations that cause stress and trying to change your reactions
• Taking breaks to relax and do something you enjoy, like reading a book or walking outside
• Seeking treatment for anxiety and depression
• Meditating and practicing yoga

A Couple More Tips

In addition to lowering your cholesterol, watching your diet, exercising regularly, and managing stress, also maintain a healthy weight and quit smoking to keep your heart as healthy as it can be.

Helping Your Heart at Our Gym

Adventure Fitness Athletic Club has the equipment, personal trainers, classes, and friendly atmosphere you need to begin and maintain a heart-healthy exercise program. Please contact us to learn more about how we can help you reach your fitness goals. We offer one-on-one coaching and advice to each of our members, which is why they tell us we’re the best gym in the Thornton area. For more information about our gym, visit us or contact Susan at 720-849-0245 or susan@adventurefitness.club.

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