5 Proven Tips to Remain Heart Healthy After 40

When my mother’s youngest sister suddenly died one morning and the cause was attributed to a heart attack, we were stunned into disbelief. For one, she was not that old, just 60 years, and second, there was no family history of heart attacks. For me, there was a third dimension. As far as we knew, she had never complained of any chest pain or any other symptoms typically associated with a heart attack. To my young mind, all that registered was: she was too young to go just like that!

However, we were wrong.

There had been signs. Signs she had ignored, taken lightly. It didn’t help that she was unmarried and lived alone. 

For a few days, preceding that fatal morning, she would wake up in the mornings, her head and pillow drenched in sweat. Even though it was May, the copious sweating was inexplicable. She put it down to the unusually hot summer we were having that year (fatal mistake; never assume when it comes to your health).

On the day she died, for the first time she felt a searing pain in her chest and immediately called up my other aunt (her elder sister) who lived some miles away. They raced their way to the nearest hospital, where the paramedics rushed her to the ICU immediately after seeing her condition. 

Now, my aunt was also a major hypochondriac and the thought of ICU must have triggered a tsunami of panic in her. She died on the hospital bed itself even as treatment was underway.

Later, the doctors informed us that she must have had a heart attack that morning and the second one in the hospital proved fatal as it usually does. 

The major sign had been the inexplicable sweating. Night sweats indicate that a woman is experiencing major heart trouble. 

So, even though heart attacks are usually associated with men, they are the leading cause of death among females in the United States. And one in four women die of a heart attack, according to the Centre for Disease Control (CDC). 

Sadly, according to the American Heart Association, only one in five women even realize that heart disease for women can be fatal.

Your heart keeps you alive and these 5 proven tips help you return that favor! 

1. Get physical

No matter what your age, or how busy your weekdays are, unless you want to make an unplanned exit or end up under a surgeon’s knife, keep aside at least 30 minutes of exercise in your daily regime. Walk, skip, jump, jog, go gymming, whatever works for you. But, move that body, get your heart pumping – it is begging for exercise.

2. Don’t ignore any symptoms that don’t seem to add up

Feeling fatigued for days without any real reason? Getting a pain in the neck or jaw or back just out of the blue? Feel suddenly short of breath in the middle of a chore? No, that’s not because you are getting on or haven’t eaten breakfast, although there could be other reasons too. Best, not to wait for things to escalate to an emergency level. Check with your doctor immediately. Thanks to Covid, these days, hospitals in our area are all offering video appointments with doctors, so we don’t get to jostle with the crowds. 

3. Keep a check on your blood pressure

One of the surest signs of an impending heart problem (or a stroke) is a shooting blood pressure level. A consistent systolic reading of anything above 150mmHg and a diastolic reading of anything above 90mmHg are all red flags. High blood pressure means that the force your blood exerts against the walls of the arteries is very high. It means your heart now has to work extra hard and less efficiently. Get your blood pressure monitored regularly. We have a BP monitor at home – a small, handy thing – and we as a family record our blood pressure every week, just to make sure everything is as it should be. 

4. Maintain an ideal weight

The curse of the modern age, with easy access to tempting but usually unhealthy food at the click of a mouse, means we are turning into a generation of obese people. Self-control might be tough in the face of all these alluring food options, but if you want to truly enjoy your sunset years, then a steely determination will see you have a friendly relationship with your weighing scales.

5. Don’t stress about stress!

Stress is a silent killer. All that brooding and worrying and fretting and getting worked up…stop! Be kind to yourself. Sure, words hurt, actions devastate and memories leave you restless and agonized. But….that is all in the past. Even if it happened yesterday, it is still in the past. Let it go. Trust me, I was a master brooder, agonizing and torturing myself endlessly with what-ifs and I-should-haves. Not anymore. How I achieved this almost Zen-like equanimity is in another blog ☺ 

There are many more dos and don’ts but I just picked the 5 that kind of sum it all up. Get these 5 right and we are almost done!