New Year’s is a great time to take stock of your life and make the changes necessary to improve aspects of it. Here at Northwest Houston Heart Center, cardiologists Dr. A. Adnan Aslam and Dr. Roy Norman encourage you to make some heart-healthy resolutions not just for this year, but for all the years to come. Here are some of their suggestions.

Heart-healthy New Year’s resolutions

Here are some resolutions you can make that will improve not just your heart health, but also your entire cardiovascular system and your body.

Lower blood pressure

Your blood pressure is the force blood exerts on the artery walls when your heart pumps it to the tissues in the rest of your body. It’s reported as two numbers: the systolic (top number), which is the force when the heart actively beats, and the diastolic (bottom number), which is when your heart rests between beats.

A normal blood pressure reading is 120/80 mm Hg (millimeters of mercury), as measured by an inflatable cuff around your upper arm. If either the diastolic or systolic numbers are higher than this, you’re said to have hypertension, or high blood pressure.

Hypertension usually occurs due to clogged arteries, and the heart has to work harder to pump the same amount of blood through your body. Eventually, if the numbers get too high, it can’t pump hard enough, and the tissues become starved for oxygen and other nutrients.

You can lower your blood pressure through lifestyle changes, including:

• Eating less salt
• Getting regular exercise
• Maintaining a healthy weight
• Not smoking
• Getting enough good-quality sleep

If lifestyle changes alone don't help, the doctor may prescribe one or more medications to lower your blood pressure.

Lower cholesterol

Cholesterol is a waxy fat that’s important for certain body functions, like making cell membranes, some hormones, and regulating metabolism. Your liver makes all the cholesterol you need, but you get additional amounts from foods you eat, especially animal-derived foods like meat and dairy.

Knowing your cholesterol levels is important because it indicates your risk for heart disease. If you have too much cholesterol, and too much LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, the body can’t clear it, and it lodges in your arteries, narrowing and hardening them in a process called atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries).

The only way to know if you have a problem is through a blood test with a lipid panel. Plaque build-up produces no discernable symptoms, and you may not know you have a problem until you hit a crisis, like a heart attack or stroke.

Resolve to get your cholesterol levels tested at your next physical or visit to the cardiologist. Knowing your numbers, and reducing cholesterol-containing foods, may just save your life.

Get exercise

Exercise not only helps you shed extra pounds, but it tones your cardiovascular system and lowers your risk of serious diseases like type 2 diabetes. There are two types, aerobic and resistance training.

Aerobic exercise improves circulation, which lowers blood pressure and heart rate, and it helps your heart pump more effectively. Ideally, you should get at least 30 minutes a day, at least five days a week, totaling 150 minutes of moderate activity (e.g., running, swimming, tennis); that is, activity that increases your heart rate.

Resistance training targets body composition, and it’s especially good for those who carry a lot of body fat around their waist, which is a risk factor for heart disease. Resistance training reduces fat and creates leaner muscle mass.

Some good suggestions are working out with free weights, on weight machines, or with resistance bands, or you can try body-resistance exercises, such as push-ups, squats, and chin-ups.

The American College of Sports Medicine says to target two nonconsecutive days a week for training.

Research shows that a combination of aerobic exercise and resistance training may help raise HDL (good) cholesterol and lower LDL (bad) cholesterol.

Want more resolution suggestions? Need a cardiovascular evaluation? Northwest Houston Heart Center can help with both. Give us a call at any of our locations (Tomball, Cypress, Magnolia, and The Woodlands, Texas), or book online today. You can also text us at 832-402-9518.