British Heart Foundation: Heart Month

Our hearts can’t survive without love or a healthy lifestyle! National Heart Month is every February.   Understanding heart conditions isn’t an easy task – there are lots of different types and knowing how the heart works is important when trying to learn about these conditions. However, looking at the facts will benefit yourself and the people you love in the long run, please find an outline of high risk heart conditions below:  

• Heart attack - happens when your heart muscle is starved of oxygen-rich blood. This causes damage to your heart muscle.
• An abnormal heart rhythm - sometimes called an arrhythmia - means your heart is beating too fast, too slow, or with an irregular pattern.
• Coronary heart disease (CHD) - when your coronary arteries (the arteries that supply your heart muscle with oxygen-rich blood) become narrowed by a gradual build-up of fatty material within their walls.
• Angina - a pain or discomfort felt in your chest, which is usually caused by coronary heart disease.

So how can you avoid all these happening to you and your family? Keeping your heart healthy, whatever your age, is the most important thing you can do to help prevent or manage heart disease. A healthy diet can help reduce your risk of developing coronary heart disease and stop you gaining weight, reducing your risk of diabetes and high blood pressure. For smoker’s, quitting smoking is the single best thing you can do for your heart health. If you’re a smoker, stopping smoking is the single most important step you can take to protect the health of your heart. What could you do in ten minutes?   Making small changes to your daily routine can make a big difference to your heart health – which in the long term could save your life. For ideas visit https://www.bhf.org.uk/heart-health/preventing-heart-disease/10-minutes-to-change-your-life   This important month also gives us the perfect excuse to sip a glass of red wine by holding your own Red Wine Tasting Evening! Red Wine is known to be good for the heart, but only in moderation, so why not continue the theme by hosting a “Come Dine Red with Me” evening?   You could ask your friends or family to bring along a red themed dish, the options are endless and it’s a great way for you to practise your cooking skills while raising money at the same time!