How To Take Care of Your Heart

Heart is a symbol of love, joy, happiness, honesty and bravery. From childhood, we create different kinds of hearts for our parents, first loves, favourite pets or other beings. Heartbeat means life. There´s no doubt about the importance of heart. Many people, however, forget about it and even give it a thrashing. How to take care of your heart to keep it healthy and to make yourself happy?

High cholesterol, high blood pressure – what is the reason of it?

In the previous fifty years, cholesterol and related high blood pressure have been a frequently discussed topic in the context of cardio-vascular diseases. First, saturated fats were demonized and labelled as the reason of cholesterol plaque inside vessels and margarines (artificial trans fats) together with low fat products came to existence. New studies have shown recently, that these claims were untrue and have pardoned fats. On the contrary, the harmful effect of low fat products full of sugar has been pointed out. We definitely need fats!

Statins, by the way, the medication prescribed for high cholesterol as well as the high blood pressure medication, which now can be prescribed by GPs as well , are of the most common pills. The pharmaceutical industry celebrates and each time younger generations are dutifully popping pills.

How to deal with it? It´s simple. Just use your common sense! How could you think that industrially processed foods are really healthy for you? Our great great grandmothers certainly didn´t deep-fry, didn´t spread bread with refined durable foods or eat low-fat cottage cheese. But they didn´t stuffed themselves with fatty pork or sausages twice a day either. The used more buckwheat, legumes, seasonal and local fruit and vegetables. It is the alpha and omega of healthy body to care about eating real food with minimal processing. We shouldn´t be heavy-handed with fat, even the healthy ones in nuts and seeds – if we did, the gall bladder would be overloaded. Handful of nuts or nut milk is optimum.

It´s all about stress

There are also vegetarians with high cholesterol and high blood pressure. What is the other factor that can influence our heart? Yes, it´s stress. Stress has an impact on you to such extend to which you let it influence you. Therefore, it´s good to learn how to resist it. Many things can help us, such as  adaptogens, calming essential oils, concentrating on your breath or squats. The most important thing is to realize what is the cause of stress and what can we do with it. Sometimes, it´s enough to change the point of view to resolve the problem. 

Love is love

He stole my heart, it warms the cockles of my heart, I have a broken heart – we all know how the emotions, either positive or negative, can show on our body. If we spare no expense on expressing love and respect, we´ll nurture others´ hearts and ours as well. Lies, excuses and self-deceit are hurting the heart because it knows the truth.  

Health through sport

Certainly, we can´t miss out sport activities. Heart is a muscle and it is necessary to train it. Those who do any type of exercise regularly have the strongest cardiovascular system. Every person should find some form of exercising that corresponds with their capacities. Too much sport exhausts you. Generally, we should walk at least 5 kilometres per day (10 000 steps) and get out of breath from time to time to pump up our heart. If you buy a pedometer you may be surprised by finding that having a sedentary job and commuting by car or public transport, you really don´t walk much.

Heart as an emperor

Traditional Chinese medicine points out the importance of heart as well and compares it to an emperor that rules all the organs, sees every emotion and tastes every taste. It is characterized by the element of fire and the emotion of joy, it pumps blood altogether with nutrients and oxygen into every body cell. The state of heart is revealed on cheeks and on the tip of the nose. Red cheeks signify excessive heat; pale cheeks signify lack of blood and purplish cheeks can mean stagnation of blood in the body.

Shen spirit, our spiritual consciousness, resides in heart. It is responsible for the overall impression we give. If we have enough of heart qi energy and abundance of blood in which the spirit is anchored, we are content, our eyes glow, we are able to complete what we´ve started and we sleep well. And the other way round – if we´re happy, it nurtures the spirit. However, the excessive happiness can be harmful, according to eastern knowledge. It leads to distraction of energy and mind, the heart is not protected and harmful demons, the cause of psychical distractedness, can settle there.

When heart suffers from deficiency, it becomes evident in inability to feel joy, in irregular heartbeat, paleness, cold limbs, insomnia, stammering, distractedness and anxiety. It can come as far as a burnout.

When, on the contrary, fire gets over the healthy level as a result of strong emotions, symptoms of heat such as red cheeks, red tip of the tongue, inflammations, inappropriate laughter and talkativeness, moodiness or even hysteria and hyperactivity without finishing the activity can appear.

The biggest enemies of healthy blood are coffee, alcohol, smoking, drugs, excessive consumption of animal proteins, long-term emotional discomfort, stress, working the shifts and computer games.

Our tip: Medical mushroom reishi is a nutrition for heart and shen spirit. It is also an adaptogen, which help us to deal with stress.

What makes our heart feel OK?

• adequate physical activity
• natural foods with bigger proportion of plants, it should correspond with the physical activity
• avoid trans fats, canned food, smoked meat products and other processed food
• rest enough and sleep enough
• master a technique to deal with stress
• do, what you fancy doing, but not party too much
• express love and appreciation
• live honestly

Every step in our lives should be guided by heart. In Vitalvibe, we also do what we enjoy to help people live a happy live by means of high-quality products, information and services. This is one of the reasons why you find a symbol of heart on our products ;)