By Tim French- Accredited Exercise Physiologist
This week is the Heart Foundation’s Heart Week, a timely reminder to take a minute to think about what makes us tick. Paying homage to the marvellous muscle that keeps us all pumping, the team at Northside Allied Health, will be posting heart smart tips, dietary advice and useful information about how we can show our heart some love.
We all know that exercise is good for our physical and mental wellbeing and central to this notion is the heart. Like any muscle in our body, without good use it becomes less effective at doing its job and when your job is 24/7 with no public holidays, you need to be strong and efficient!
But it takes all types to make the world go around and not all of us have the motivation to take a spin class or pump weights at the gym. So, the question we are asking you during Heart Week is;
‘What makes you tick’?
Choosing a form of exercise that is both enjoyable and sustainable will benefit you and your heart in the long run (mind the pun). Exercise doesn’t have to involve lycra and copious amounts of sweat to be effective. In fact, a new study conducted at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Life Science Division in Berkeley, California, revealed that walking briskly can lower your risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes as much as running.
Incidental exercise and encouraging active family living is another way to ensure you and your family are ‘getting in your steps’. Whether it’s getting off the bus one stop early, or taking the stairs instead of the lift, in conjunction with good nutrition, it all counts as far as our heart is concerned.
And while we are marvelling at this wondrous muscle that beats approximately 100,000 times a day, we can thank it for being so resilient that even when its treated poorly, it’s not beyond repair. With regular exercise, a healthy diet and good lifestyle choices, you can get your ticker back on track.
And of course if your heart does need some love, enlisting the help of an Accredited Exercise Physiologist is the safest and most effective way to ensure you get back on track and living life to its fullest potential.
Stay tuned this week as we explore the depths of our heart with further insight from the team on how to eat for the heart and how to repair a broken one.
#heartweek