Guide To Heart Disease Prevention

Get Regular Exercise

One of the best ways an individual can help prevent heart disease is to get regular exercise. Exercise can enhance the function of an individual's cardiovascular system and heart through many mechanisms. Regular exercise helps patients achieve and maintain healthy body weight. Regular exercise helps condition blood vessels and amplifies their ability to dilate when needed. Blood vessels that restrict blood flow due to an inability to dilate can cause heart disease. Regardless of a patient's diabetes status, exercise has proven to help an individual manage their blood sugar easier. Because regular exercise conditions the blood vessels to better accommodate blood that is exerting more force on them, the individual's blood pressure decreases and is easier to manage. It takes regular exercise over time to achieve these preventative effects. However, patients who already have an existing blockage in their coronary arteries that supply heart tissues can prevent further complications by exercising regularly. This response occurs because the heart muscle adapts to the oxygen starvation in its tissues. Exercise causes further deprivation of oxygen in such tissues, which triggers the adaptive mechanisms of the heart.

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