Preventing Heart Disease with Excercise

We should all be taking heart health very seriously, it is the number one cause of death here in the United States. There are several reasons this disease has risen to such alarming rates. One is because we have increased our meat intake in the past decades. For more information about that please check out my previous blog covering this topic.

http://pivotholistichealth.com/americas-obsession-with-protein/

The next aspect of this deadly but preventable disease is inactivity. If your work and leisure activities are mainly sedentary you double your chance of dying from a cardiovascular disease. If your heart is in poor condition you are also more likely to suffer from a stroke.

These are very serious conditions that can not only can steal away years of your life but also severely decrease the quality of your life if you are able to survive a cardiovascular event. Shortness of breath and decrease blood pumping volumes can hold you back from experiencing all the great things life has to offer. With poor heart health it may be very difficult to complete your daily activities and even prevent you from sharing experiences with loved ones, such as playing with our children and grand children- they need us.

Now that we realize how serious it is that we keep our cardiovascular health in good working condition, lets explore how exercise helps our heart.

We know the heart consists of muscle. We know from experience, if we don’t use a muscle we lose it. Imagine the biceps, lets say we do bicep curls two times a week habitually. Eventually, the muscle builds with exercise and we will need to increase the weight we are curling. The heart is the same. Working it out makes the muscle stronger and it will be able to increase the amount of blood it pumps out with every beat, in turn the heart has to beat less times to move the same amount of blood. The cardiovascular system also becomes more efficient in many aspects with regular exercises. You can see this with people that work out regularly. They can do activities with ease that someone who is unconditioned struggles with.

Regular exercise also helps the blood vessels work better, helping with blood pressure levels. It also has been known to increase HDL which decreases cholesterol and decreases body fat percentage.

You can do this! It’s important and deserves your time. Stay tuned to this blog for sample workout protocols and activity suggestions!