Looking after your heart this February (and those you love!) Part 2

It’s February and our thoughts may turn to love and romance with Valentine’s day this week.   At First Response First Aid we are thinking about heart-health of a different kind, how to spot someone having a heart attack and what to do, but also how we can look after our hearts and the 7 things we can do to keep them healthy.

According to the British Heart Foundation, heart and circulatory disease causes 26% of all deaths in the UK; that’s nearly 160,000 deaths each year, an average of 435 people each day or one death every three minutes. 

Keeping your heart healthy is the most important thing you can do to help prevent heart disease.

These 7 things help:-

1. maintaining a well-balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, only a quarter of UK adults and one in five children consume the recommended minimum five portions of fruit and vegetables per day.
2. keeping active, nearly two out of five adults in the UK do not achieve recommended levels of physical activity every day.
3. watching your weight.
4. quitting smoking, it is estimated that up to 20,000 UK deaths each year from cardiovascular disease can be attributed to smoking.
5. cutting down on alcohol, a quarter of adults in the UK exceed national guidelines for weekly alcohol intake.
6. managing stress and knowing your blood pressure, people with high blood pressure are up to three times more likely to develop heart disease or have a stroke.
7. lowering cholesterol.

The British Heart Foundation has some very useful booklets free on their website that focus on these areas (and more) with hints and tips, as well as success stories. https://www.bhf.org.uk/heart-health/preventing-heart-disease/10-minutes-to-change-your-life

So this February think about looking after your heart and those you love!  Book onto a first aid course in your local area and learn about dealing with all types of emergency, but especially how to use a AED and do CPR.  Make 2018 the year you learn how to save a life.

Read the first part of this article here.