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cardiovacular health

4 Ways to Improve Your Heart Health

ways to improve your heart health

The heart is one of the most vital organs responsible for our survival. Our hearts are constantly working 24/7, beating approximately 2.5 billion times in an average lifetime. With that said, heart disease is also the number one cause of death, claiming about 1 million lives a year. Heart disease is often caused by buildup of plaque, calcium, cholesterol, and other substances inside the coronary arteries that are responsible for supplying oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscles. Too much buildup restricts blood flow to the heart, which can result in a heart attack, stroke, or death. Knowing this, we must do what we can to ensure our hearts are functioning properly and optimally. Thankfully, there are some relatively simple lifestyle changes you can adopt to help you avoid or slow down, or drastically improve heart-related issues. Keep reading to learn more about how to work towards a healthier heart!

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Primary Prevention as an Anti-Aging Strategy - the importance of starting down the right path

 
Risk factors and chronic diseases typically get most attention among middle-age and older folks. And rightly so, since that's when the manifestations of chronic diseases start to show up, and when people get reminded about their chronological age.
 
An integral component of anti-aging (aka successful aging or healthy aging) is the freedom of physical disabilities and debilitating chronic diseases.[1-3] While it is true that it is never too late to become health conscious and reap the benefits of a healthy lifestyle [4, 5], the fact remains that the sooner we start the better off we will be as we get older.[6, 7] If you are in your 20s, 30s or early 40s, read on….
 
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Fish oil supplementation - benefits for young healthy adults

Fish oil is well known for protecting against development and progression of cardiovascular disease in high risk individuals, mostly middle-age and older.[1-4] A notable recent study shows that fish oil supplementation also confers health benefits in young healthy adults.[5]

Young healthy males, aged 21-24 years, were given a fish oil supplement providing 2 g EPA and 1 g DHA per day for 3 months. It was found that the fish oil supplementation significantly reduced fasting blood triglycerides (i.e. blood fats) by a whopping 38% (from 86 mg/dL to 54 mg/dL) and also improved the total cholesterol/HDL ratio, by reducing it from 3.25 to 3.05.

Relevance of blood triglycerides and the total cholesterol/HDL ratio for cardiovascular disease

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