Dr. Steele: Ever wonder how to keep your heart healthy as you age? Tune in to find out. My name is Dr. Erica Steele. I’m a holistic doctor in family practice. I hold six degrees in my field and they’re all in the natural healthcare space. I’ve been in natural healthcare for over 20 years, and I choose a. To be a Drugless doctor.
So let’s get into it. Heart health is incredibly important, especially as we age, because the risk of heart disease typically increases as we age. So here are some tips to maintain heart health as you age, number one. Regular exercise, that’s movement. Movement of your body through physical activity can help to not only reduce blood pressure, but also improve circulation and reduce your overall risk of heart disease.
You wanna aim for at least 30 minutes of moderately intensive exercise, such as a brisk walk on most days of the week. So if you have an Apple watch, you can track it. And then also too, you can. Spike light jog. There’s so many different physical activities that you can do. Just find something that you enjoy and stick with it.
Second, maintaining a healthy diet. Eating a diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean protein as well as healthy fats can help to lower the risk of heart disease and improve overall cardiovascular risk. You want to avoid processed foods, added sugars, as well as saturated fats as those.
Definitely contribute to heart disease as well as a list of conditions such as diabetes and obesity and metabolic syndrome. Third, manage your blood pressure as well as your cholesterol. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are some of the major risk factors for heart disease according to. The American Medical Association, blood pressure definitely is one of those.
Your healthcare provider can help you to manage these conditions through lifestyle changes, or if they’re really high and you’re at great risk for heart attack or stroke, they can also prescribe medication. I personally do not prescribe medication in my practice and also I’m not an alternative doctor, which means I don’t replace medication.
For a naturally occurring substance, we want to really make sure that we’re working on lifestyle changes well before they become an issue. Once the blood pressure is really high, it puts the person at risk. And so just taking herbs or things like that oftentimes is not the best approach when you’re working to help.
I tend to tell my patients the number one cause of hypertension is dehydration. So make sure that you’re drinking a minimum of half your bodyweight and ounces and water. Fourth, don’t smoke. So smoking is a major risk factor for heart disease as well as stroke. It allows for decreased oxygen in the body, which then has decreased oxygen in the cells, not to mention all of the different heavy metals and chemicals.
So if you smoke, quitting is one of the most important things you can do to improve your health. If you need support in that, and you don’t wanna use a pharmacological, Please feel free to reach out. We do have a smoking sensation, A D I Y course. It is a 30 day course, and we also give you homeopathic tools to reduce cravings and detoxify your body.
Fifth, you wanna control your blood sugar levels, so if you have diabetes, it’s important to manage blood sugar levels through diet, exercise, as well as if you need medication, and that will help to reduce the risk of heart disease. I’m not saying that you always need medication. Not always necessary to have to stabilize, but that’s a conversation between you and your healthcare providers and your healthcare team.
I tend to work in concert with or integrative. I don’t replace a lot of things. However, I can reduce, if not eliminate medication usage depending on the patient and patient compliance. Every case is different, so I always like to look. What’s going on first, and I take a very practical approach with it.
Number six, you wanna manage your stress. So stress, ugh, is like gasoline on any fire, it can increase the risk of heart disease. So you wanna make sure you practice stress management techniques such as deep breathing or meditation. Or mindset training can all really help to reduce stress and improve overall, improve your overall health and wellbeing.
Lastly, regular checkups. So regular checkups with your healthcare provider or professional is really important to detect as well as prevent heart disease, as well as monitor any medication that you may be taking for existing conditions. So your allopathic doctor’s role, I like to call them firefighters of medicine.
That’s what their role is. They’re trained to look for and identify the fires and put them out before. They happen. Doctors like me, we are more like medical detectives. We find out why after the fact the fires have started. But also too, we’re always monitoring and making sure practically before things happen.
We try to teach people to be very proactive instead of reactive. So working with people on their mindset, their emotions, their stress, their eating habits, their lifestyle changes. All of that really plays in before, so that when you go to your regular annual checkup, your medical doctor says everything looks good because you’ve been very proactive throughout the year.
It’s important to note that everyone is different and the best approach for you may vary depending on your personal health history. I also look at genetics. As a part of it, and also trauma, which has a huge role in a lot of health conditions. So it’s always good to have a healthcare team, not just one provider and one different perspective, but people from all different perspectives.
I love working in teams. I love crosswords with different providers and an integrative style. Because we all don’t have the right answers, and we’re all not perfect. We are human beings, especially doctors. We do make mistakes and we overlook things. So it’s really important that we look at all different perspectives, not just the standard diagnose and manage model.
So if you wanna learn more about ways that you can help be proactive with your health, tune in and subscribe to find out more.
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