February is National Heart Health Awareness Month

In honor of National Heart Health awareness, month, I sit down with Dr. Steve Petzel and share my top tips on maintaining and improving heart health.

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Movement Matters

It's essential for your heart health to move well and move often. Not sure where to start as far as exercise? Here is a total body workout you can do anywhere with your body weight. The reason I like total body workouts so much is because it allows all muscles to be worked, but not overworked. As a result, the soreness isn't debilitating, and you can make sure the entire body is strengthened throughout the week. It is hard enough to get 2-3 days of resistance training in for most people. Total body workouts allow you to accomplish what you need via strength training, with less frequency. This allows room for schedule inconsistencies, travel, and let's be honest, life in general. Along with body weight, using free weights, machines, bands, and Pilates reformers are great ways to implement resistance training into your lifestyle. Variety is key here, keeping your brain and body motivated and excited.

Food for Thought

Nutrition is incredibly important in conjunction with exercise. As the recent food guide pyramid has changed, it's important to prioritize protein at all meals, particularly animal based proteins containing the 9 essential amino acids necessary for muscle protein synthesis. The new food guide pyramid is based on the principle of eating real foods, not highly processed foods. None of it is new or complicated, but more going back to the basics before food became mass produced and chemically modified.

Stress and the Heart

We all know that stress can cause heart issues, but do we actually know why? Well, the common known reason is elevation of blood pressure. However, stress also affects the release of cortisol in the body, which then causes an increase of blood glucose in the body as emergency fuel. Insulin then chases that emergency fuel and your system becomes exhausted. This is why stress often causes fatigue and stubborn weight gain. Your body essentially goes into survival mode. In order to reverse this cycle, practicing effective stress management activities such as consistent sleep, utilizing breath work, limiting caffeine when you're already wired, and/or adding magnesium or adaptogens for additional adrenal support.

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