Did you know that cardiovascular disease claims more women each year than the next FIVE leading causes of death among women? We’re talking half a million women a year die of heart disease!
Lung cancer and breast cancer are ranked second and third.
While these statistics may sound scary, there is some encouraging news — heart disease is mostly preventable. You read that right... PREVENTABLE! Your healthy lifestyle (or lack of it) will make all the difference in the world.
We need to learn to love and respect our hearts to keep them strong and healthy! So how do we do that?
The answer to this is two-fold. And it goes back to that same old song and dance: diet and exercise.
We have to understand that inactivity is one of the major risk factors in developing heart disease. The antidote to the inactivity problem is establishing a new habit of moving — something as simple as walking out the door each morning for 15 minutes and turning around and coming home equals 30 minutes of aerobic activity—the American Heart Association’s recommendation for exercise.
It doesn’t have to be expensive and difficult to be effective. Keep that in mind.
That 30 minutes of walking is going to affect every muscle in your body, especially the most important muscle of all — your heart. That little bit of movement each day is like investing a portion of your paycheck every month into a savings account so you can have something in your retirement years. By the time you need your little nest egg, it will be built up and providing you the comfort you need in your older years.
That is what exercise will do for your heart, too.
But what does that look like? We all know that toned muscles are stronger than untoned muscles. We’ve all seen pictures of body builders and know what toned muscles look like (not that I’m saying your muscles need to be THAT toned!). Movement helps your muscles to grow, your body fat to diminish and your heart to get stronger.
Cardiovascular exercise — that would be walking, jogging, running, swimming, dancing, mowing the lawn — is what builds healthy heart muscle. The way to exercise your heart
from : www.diet.com
