6 Best Exercises to Keep Your Heart Healthy

The heart is one of the most vital organs in the human body. Poor heart health can lead to light-headedness, lethargy and, in more serious cases, heart attacks and stroke. Luckily, there are certain exercises that can help keep your heart healthy.

Staying healthy and well can often seem like a challenge in our ever-bustling modern world, but this is undeniably an important goal. As part of this, ensuring good heart health and function is crucial; after all, your heart is one of the most important organs in your body, and is responsible for supplying blood to every single cell.

With this in mind, ensuring your heart is healthy is vital – and there are several excellent heart health exercises you can try to keep things running smoothly. In turn, this may help lower your risk of suffering from cardiovascular diseases and many other chronic conditions; as such, it’s a worthwhile investment of time for sure.

Why is Good Heart Health Important?

There are so many reasons why good heart health is important, and considering these can help you understand a little more about the vital role the heart plays in the body.

Simply put, your heart pumps oxygenated blood from your lungs around the body, delivering oxygen to every single cell. In doing so, your heart provides a crucial, lifesaving service – and it does this 24/7 throughout your life. It never stops or rests; as such, it’s under a huge amount of pressure and strain at all times to keep you alive. With this thought in mind, it suddenly becomes easy to see why good heart health is so important.

When your heart health begins to waver, you may start seeing several complications. This is most commonly seen as either high or low blood pressure, which can be serious.

During the early stages of poor heart health, you may experience symptoms such as lightheadedness, dizziness, weakness, lethargy, difficulty concentrating, headaches, and nose bleeds. However, as heart health worsens, it is not uncommon to begin experiencing more serious issues, including the risk of heart attacks, strokes, collapsing, and the like.

Poor Heart Health in Australia – The Stats

The number of people struggling with poor heart health in Australia has been increasing. In fact, heart disease has become the number one cause of death in Australia in recent years, accounting for around 11% of all losses. In addition, cardiovascular conditions more broadly account for over one-quarter of Australian deaths.

Approximately one million people in Australia are living with conditions related to poor heart health (such as heart disease, vascular conditions, and strokes) in the present day. This represents an annual cost to the Australian health system of around $11.8 billion – clearly highlighting the scale of cardiovascular difficulties in Australia.

As such, the scale of the problem surrounding poor heart health in Australia is evidently broad – however, many people still struggle to find the support they need to maintain good heart health.

Exercise and Heart Health

While poor heart health can seem like an impossible situation to overcome, there are numerous excellent heart health exercises that may help.

Indeed, regularly exercising can be effective for maintaining a healthy body weight, which initially places less pressure on the heart; furthermore, it reduces inflammation, lowers blood pressure, and supports circulation to keep your blood flowing as normal. Regular exercise can also strengthen the heart, lowering your heart rate over time so that the heart doesn’t have to work so erratically.

The Best Exercises for Good Heart Health

There are numerous exercises for good heart health you could try, which may include the following.

Running

Did you know that running is one of the best exercises you can try for good heart health? It might be a simple exercise, but as a moderately intensive aerobic exercise, it can deliver excellent benefits for your cardiovascular health overall. Indeed, studies have found that runners who exercise regularly and consistently have half the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases than those who do not run.

As such, this is well worth considering as part of your decision on the best exercises for heart health. To learn more about the benefits of running, be sure to check out our article here for further information.

Walking

It might not deliver results as quickly as running, but walking regularly is also a highly effective option to help reduce your chances of suffering from cardiovascular diseases. Since walking is a gentler form of aerobic exercise, it’s often easy to walk for longer durations of time without feeling as exhausted; furthermore, it’s also a practical exercise to include in your daily life to improve your heart health overall.

Even getting up from your desk to stretch your legs every hour or so can significantly impact your heart health. As such, if you don’t have the means for intensive heart health exercises, walking could be the ideal alternative.

Swimming

If you’re looking for low-intensity exercises to support heart health, swimming may be an excellent option to consider. As explained by Harvard Health, swimming provides a highly effective aerobic workout, supporting heart health and increasing the heart’s ability to utilize oxygen efficiently.

The water helps take pressure off your joints, making it a good option to consider if you are struggling with joint or muscle health. This is why water therapy is often used for rehabilitation: it reduces pressure on the joints while simultaneously strengthening the muscles, including the heart.

Cycling

Along the same train of thought as walking, running, and swimming, cycling is another excellent cardio exercise you could try if you’ve been looking to improve your circulation and strengthen your heart. It can also help reduce the levels of vascular fat, thereby improving circulation accordingly.

Weight Training

When we think about heart health exercises, we immediately think of aerobic exercises. However, don’t rule out weight training; while it might not directly support heart health, it does help improve your overall muscle mass and fitness, making it easier to avoid cardiovascular complications indirectly.

Yoga

As well as potentially promoting circulation, there’s a lot to love about yoga for heart health and wellbeing. Most notably, yoga is effective for heart health as it helps improve flexibility and allows you to stretch before and after exercise. In turn, this makes it easier to keep going – thereby giving your heart a better workout, accordingly.

Final Thoughts

Promoting good heart health is vital for all of us due to the massive role our heart plays in keeping us alive and well. However, we can overlook this in many cases, often neglecting to consider our heart health until things start to go wrong. Fortunately, you can try plenty of excellent heart health exercises to help reduce the risk of suffering from complications arising from poor heart health. We’ve outlined just a few of the best today to help inform your decision accordingly.

If you’d like to learn more about good heart health, please don’t be afraid to reach out to a member of our friendly team today to book a first aid course.