Establishing healthy living habits is a good way to improve heart health as well as prevent cardiovascular diseases. Healthy habits include proper diet and exercise. What exercises help improve the circulatory system? Is running everyday good for your heart? Take note of the things below when running to boost your heart health.
Benefits of regular exercise for your heart
In fact, combining regular exercise with a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight and not smoking is a great plan against coronary artery disease and other heart diseases. Understand physical activity and how it benefits your heart to be a powerful motivator to move you to go more.
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Exercise lowers blood pressure
Exercise can slow your heart rate and lower blood pressure. High blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease
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Exercise is key to weight control
Physical activity is an essential element for weight loss and is especially effective when combined with a healthy diet that optimizes heart health. Being overweight puts stress on the heart and is a risk factor for heart disease and stroke.
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Exercise helps build muscles
An exercise regimen that includes aerobic exercises (health-dependent, which can include walking, running, swimming, and other heart-rate-raising activities) and strength training (weight lifting, strength training scissors) is considered to be very good for heart health. These exercises enhance the muscle mass’s ability to absorb oxygen from the blood. This reduces the pressure on the heart – itself a muscle mass – to work hard to bring blood to the muscles, no matter your age.
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Exercise can prevent or slow the development of diabetes
Johns Hopkins research has shown that, when combined with strength training, regular exercise such as cycling, brisk walking or swimming can reduce your risk of developing diabetes by more than 50%. This is because exercise helps muscles better process glycogen, a fuel that provides energy, which, when depleted, leads to too much sugar in the bloodstream and thus diabetes.
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Exercise reduces stress
Stress hormones can put an additional burden on the heart. Exercise, whether it’s aerobic exercise (like running), or weight training or yoga … can help you relax and reduce stress.
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Exercise reduces inflammation
Regular exercise will reduce chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is the cause of many diseases, including cardiovascular disease.
Read about exercises that are good for the circulatory system: What Are The Exercises For High Blood Pressure?
Is running everyday good for your heart?
Now you know that regular exercises can bring a great number of advantages to your heart. Among common exercises, running is a great option. Is running really a great way to strengthen your heart?
It must be stated that running is NOT the cause of the heart attack
Common causes of heart attacks are:
- Use of drugs and stimulants
- Excessive stress
- Prolonged cold infection
- Smoke
- Lack of oxygen
And some other pathological factors.
A survey taking place in the US ran on a regular running group and an inactive group. The results showed that the regular running group experienced 50 times fewer heart complications than those who did not run. This has partly confirmed the health benefits of running, especially the heart will be healthier and function better.
In fact, cardiovascular complications often come during rest more than during running. The results also showed that high levels of exercise did not damage the heart or reduce longevity.
However, cardiovascular events still possible happen while running
According to experts, running at high intensity, for long periods of time or accelerating suddenly will cause the heart to work harder and lead to overload. Common accompanying signs include chest tightness, tachycardia, and a sudden increase in blood pressure and then your heart rate. This is a very dangerous phenomenon, so you need to be careful to react accordingly.
Running everyday good for your heart: How to run properly?
Good running does not largely depend on the duration as well as the intensity of the run. Specifically, to enhance heart health, you should follow some of the following basic principles.
Run regularly
The first thing to keep in mind is to run regularly instead of running too much in one session. In regular runners, the heart rate tends to be more stable, helping to maintain general health and the cardiovascular system in particular, always in good shape.
Moderate running intensity
Depending on your health conditions, you should run with appropriate intensity, preferably running lightly for short distances. Do not force yourself to follow a heavy, high-speed schedule because this affects your heart rate quite a bit.
Running time
Each session should take place between 30-45 minutes. For starters, get used to 10 – 20 minutes at a natural pace. After that, you can gradually increase the time to each session and stabilize for about 30-45 minutes. In addition to running, alternate between other exercises such as brisk walking, swimming or cycling to avoid boredom while increasing exercise efficiency.
Running distance
Similar to the intensity of exercise, you should not try to run too long distances. Since the purpose of running is to improve heart health, you should prioritize running time rather than distance. It is best to run with about 3-5km, average speed without too much effort will be best for the heart. In contrast, continuous, intense running with a distance of more than 6km can have many potential risks to your health.
Right technique
Whatever your running goal, you’ll only get the best out of running the right technique. This factor not only brings many benefits to the heart but also helps minimize the likelihood of suffering from the injury.
First, warm up carefully in 5-10 minutes. The warm-up is quite important because it will help improve the ability to run, increase the activity of the heart so that the heart is less affected. In the first stage, run slowly, then accelerate backward and slow down when you show signs of fatigue or chest tightness.
Replenish water
According to experts, about 15 minutes of running will need about 150ml of water. If the body is not hydrated, you will feel tired faster so that it can bring bad effects to the heart and other organs. Ideally, you should carry a bottle of water with you during each run to use when needed.
Last but not least, you should listen to your body. There is no doubt saying running everyday is good for your heart. But each person’s body has its own exercise regime, especially for those with underlying medical conditions. It’s best to get advice from a health professional before building the running exercise that’s right for you.
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