Four surprising ways to boost your heart health

As much as 80 percent of premature heart disease is preventable by making specific lifestyle choices. Some strategies, such as exercising and managing weight, are well known. 【小题1】“A small change in your everyday routine can potentially have a big impact in the long run, ” says preventive cardiologist Dr. Beth Abramson, a spokesperson for the Heart and Stroke (中风) Foundation of Canada.

Get eight hours of sleep.

If we don’t have enough sleep, our bodies also have more difficulty controlling blood pressure, inflammation and glucose levels. 【小题2】

【小题3】

Doing good for others helps your self-respect and relieves stress. Research issued in Psychosomatic Medicine in 2016 showed that a feeling of purpose in life is linked to a lower likelihood of heart attack and stroke. Depending on the type of work you do, volunteering might even increase your physical activity.

Avoid polluted air.

Exposure to this kind of pollution over time raises your risk of heart disease. 【小题4】 Try to get your outdoor exercise far away from highways and industrial districts, and spend more time indoors when the air quality index is poor.

Laugh.

A 2016 study in the Journal of Epidemiology of more than 20, 000 people over the age of 65 found a lower risk of cardiovascular (心血管的) disease in those who reported laughing every day. 【小题5】 It may also serve as a mini-workout, helping your circulation and protecting the health of your arteries (动脉).

Fever has usually been regarded as a threat to health. However, no one has actually proved that fever is dangerous. This fact attracted the attention of Matthew J. Kluger. Imagining that fever might not be as harmful as it had been supposed, Kluger set up a series of experiments with lizards (蜥蜴).

What Kluger and his team did in their first experiment was simple. They put some lizards in a sand-box, one end of which was heated to 44°C, while the other was at a room temperature. It was found that the lizards moved from one part of the box to the other in order to keep a constant temperature of about 38°C. Having shown that normal lizards regulate (调节) their own temperature, Kluger, in a second experiment, then set out to show that lizards, like most other animals, develop fever when infected (感染). This was done by making lizards infected with bacteria (细菌) that were known to cause disease. As the team expected, the infected lizards remained longer in the heated part of the box, until they had raised their body temperatures to two or three degrees above normal. In other words, the sick lizards gave themselves fever.

In a third experiment, the team observed the effect of temperature on the survival of the lizards. One group of infected lizards was given a fever-suppressing (退烧) drug. The other group was given no drug and ran a fever, that is to say, they kept a higher temperature for four or five days before seeking a cooler environment. The results were impressive. Of those which raised their body temperature, all but one remained alive. Of those given the fever-suppressing drug, more than half died. Similar results have since been produced in other animals. For example, infected fish swim to warmer water, and will die if not allowed to do so.

An important conclusion can be drawn from these experiments. As Kluger points out, lizards have been on earth for hundreds of millions of years. It is reasonable to suppose that a response that is so old has been kept by nature for some purpose. It would appear, therefore, that fever does not make disease worse. Rather it is part of the mechanism (机能) by which infection is controlled.

A balanced diet comprising of diverse and healthy foods is the key to promoting good health. After all, we are what we eat — research continues to prove that eating healthy food promotes good health and unhealthy food habits lead to a diseased body. Foods contain vital nutrients that aid our body’s metabolic function. However, a lack of consumption of these nutrients or feeding upon the wrong kinds of food leads to an accumulation of toxins within the body, resulting in chronic (慢性的) diseases in the long run.

A nutritious diet while ensuring overall well being, helps to maintain a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI), reduces the risk of several debilitating diseases like cancer, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes, osteoporosis and stroke. Thus a nutritious & healthy diet is important in the prevention and cure of various diseases.

There are several health conditions that can be caused or aggravated (加重) by the food we eat. However, there are also several foods that you can include in your diet to help prevent or treat diseases. It is simplest to draw up a balanced diet chart as this will ensure that you get all the nutrients you require on a regular basis. A nutrition diet chart is a diet chart that helps you to keep a track of your nutritional diet requirements and is a very useful tool when drawing up a personalized diet plan.

However, it must be noted that allopathic medicine treats the symptoms rather than the root cause of the disease, which is usually caused by wrong eating habits leading to an accumulation of toxins within the system. Whereas a nutritious healthy diet can rectify underlying causes of diseases and restore one to wholeness of mind and body. Once we realize the connection between a wholesome balanced diet and good health, our food will be our medicine and maintaining good health will be a matter of making the right food choices and leading a healthy lifestyle.