9 Tricks to Help Strengthen Your Heart
You don’t need to suffer from a cardiac illness to be encouraged to take care of your health. If you want to have energy and strength, as well as enjoy a good mood, all you have to do is maintain good lifestyle habits. However, if you want to strengthen your heart, you can apply some additional tricks.
The heart is the most important muscle you have. The life of every human being depends on it. Therefore, it doesn’t hurt to pay a little attention to it on a daily basis.
The following tips are nothing more and nothing less than small good habits that support the proper functioning of the various organs of the body and whose impact is very significant in the short, medium, and long term.
How to strengthen your heart?
To strengthen your heart it’s not enough to attend to one area of your life and neglect the rest. This means that if you only eat a good diet, but never exercise, you may still have heart problems at some point.
Ideally, you should strive to improve all areas at the same time, little by little. It might be difficult at first, but then it’ll become so common and part of your life that it won’t even require an effort. Here are the main tricks to strengthen your heart.
1. Consume calcium-rich foods
The following sources of calcium will help you supplement your diet and obtain this essential nutrient.
- Green leafy vegetables (spinach, kale, arugula, broccoli)
- Sesame seeds
- Low-fat cheese
- Soybeans and derivatives
- White beans
- Almonds
- Figs
- Salmon
According to the experts of the Spanish Heart Foundation, maintaining a balanced diet is very beneficial for heart patients. A healthy plate should include fruits, vegetables, unsalted nuts, spices and herbs, legumes, eggs, white meats, fish, dairy products, whole grains without sugar, and olive oil.
2. Don’t forget antioxidants
Antioxidants are as necessary for the body in general as they are for our heart. Getting enough of them reduces the risk of suffering a cardiovascular accident. Get them naturally by increasing the consumption of:
- Berries
- Fruits
- Lentils
- Apples
- Vegetable
- Green tea
- Artichokes
- Dark chocolate
Read also: Heart Arrhythmias: Symptoms and Consequences
3. Try the Mediterranean diet
There are all sorts of diets in the world, but the Mediterranean diet is one of the best to strengthen the heart. This is because it is based on foods that are recommended to obtain vital nutrients. The elements that characterize it include:
- Seasonal fruit and vegetables
- Sources of healthy fats like olive oil
- Nuts
- Protein like fish and several types of meat (lamb, chicken, turkey, etc.)
Don’t miss Lose Weight with the Mediterranean Diet
4. Herbs and spices for cooking
Using spices enables us to substitute table salt when cooking, which reduces the risk of high blood pressure.
The herbs that add most antioxidants to our meals are oregano, fresh dill, thyme, rosemary, mint, and others.
You can also take advantage of these herbs and spices to give a new and more exotic touch to your recipes. You can substitute the dishes you really love but that you know aren’t very good for you for much better versions. For example, you can make oven baked potatoes seasoned with dill to avoid fried foods.
5. Increase the consumption of potassium
Eating enough potassium reduces the risk of suffering from heart complications. To strengthen the heart, it is best to eat it directly from natural sources like bananas, broccoli, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, and apricots.
6. Get enough exercise
Keeping active will help you strengthen your heart, to be much healthier and to have greater cardiovascular strength. All this means a considerable reduction in the risk of heart attacks.
Among the most recommended forms of exercise are walking and running. The recommended minimum frequency is 30 minutes three times a day. However, you can increase the number of sports you do as much as you like.
If you’re one of those people who hates exercise and can’t stand doing the same activity for several weeks, include several types of sport.
Remember that each sport helps with specific areas of the body and so the best thing is to mix them up to increase the results. Try with:
- Yoga
- Swimming
- Tai Chi
- Athletics
- Stretching
- Walking
7. Eat walnuts
Walnuts are rich in antioxidants and offer greater benefits to the heart than other nuts like almonds, peanuts, and pistachios. We recommend eating a handful of walnuts (5 to 8 walnuts) each day.
To take the best advantage of their benefits, eat them with other products, like oats and fruit. Remember that you can make homemade granola bars and add them in chunks.
8. Work on being happy
A person who is stressed all the time and goes to the extreme with their obligations tends to have a tense heart at its limit, too. Of course we can’t always be happy and totally satisfied, but equally, you can’t only focus on the negative.
Give yourself time to go out with friends, to do fun activities with your family and have good sex with your partner.
9. Other aspects to avoid
To keep your heart healthy and enjoy a good quality of life, you should take care of your weight, avoid being overweight, avoid a sedentary lifestyle and minimize the consumption of industrial, ultra-processed, and junk food.
Remember, to strengthen your heart, you should not only apply the above-mentioned tricks. You should also take care to follow your doctor’s instructions. Especially if you have any condition that warrants attention.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
Lauridsen, H. (2017). Heart regeneration. In Regenerative Engineering and Developmental Biology: Principles and Applications. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315120188
