3 Heart Healthy Ideas For American Heart Month

Heart health becomes a heightened priority for many of us as our loved ones enter the later stages of life. Ensuring that the hearts, minds, and bodies of our seniors remain stable is essential to supporting prolonged health in our communities.

With American Heart Month beginning February 1st, now is the perfect time to explore healthy lifestyle tips for patients and loved ones! As healthcare providers or family members, encouraging heart healthy habits makes a difference in the lives of seniors.

Stick around as we kick off American Heart Month with essential tips on how to support senior heart health.

Encouraging Heart Healthy Diets for Seniors

Proper nutrition is truly vital to our health. At every stage of life, nourishing foods provide key nutrients that help aid the body’s physical well-being.

For seniors, however, heart healthy diets are exponentially essential. Well-rounded nutrition is known to stabilize cardiovascular health for seniors, bringing added vitality to their overall wellness.

When proper nutrition becomes a priority for elders, the risk of ailments like heart disease or heart failure lessens. Encouraging nutrient-dense diets for the lives of our loved ones could stabilize and prolong their health through a supportive approach.

Get to Know Heart Healthy Food: Familiarizing yourself with nutritious foods may be easier than you expected! In fact, many heart healthy food choices may already be a part of your healthcare patient’s or family member’s diet.

Here are a few heart-healthy food choices to introduce to your senior community:

• Vegetables of all kinds and colors
• Natural sugars from fruits and vegetables
• Whole grains
• Low-fat dairy like yogurt or certain cheeses
• Lean proteins such as poultry, eggs, or seafood
• And plant-based proteins like lentils, beans, nuts, or seeds

Incorporate these foods into your daily routine in order to give your heart health a necessary boost.

Daily Movement or Exercise: Life tends to slow down as we age, so it’s important to prioritize daily exercise or activity for ourselves and our loved ones. Moving our bodies helps to boost our heart rate and expand our lung capacity.

This is essential to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system during the later stages of life. Maintaining good heart health is as simple as taking a walk every day to get the body and heart rate moving!

Laughter as Medicine: Laughing as a means of supporting heart health may sound too good to be true, but new research has developed informing otherwise. Laughter increases our heart rate with fast-paced breaths, allowing highly oxygenated blood to flow freely through the body.

With that being said, make sure you encourage those you love to cultivate joy and medicine through laughter. Finding time to enjoy the little things can have a profound impact on the quality of our lives, and our hearts coincidentally.

Find Support with LifeFone

If you’re interested in learning more about health and safety in your community, look to LifeFone! LifeFone offers medical alert systems for safety emergencies as well as informative lifestyle information. Contact LifeFone today and learn how our services can protect you in the event of an emergency.