Being healthy
Along with being active and eating healthily, many other
parts of your lifestyle can affect your heart and general
health.
Take our personalised online
lifestyle check to find out what might be affecting your heart;
it's quick and easy to fill in and when you're finished, you'll get
tips and support on how to improve your lifestyle and idease for
areas you might want to focus on.
There are also plenty of things you and your family can do to be
more aware of your health:
Know your shape
Make sure you’re not carrying too much weight around
your middle. It puts you at risk of getting heart
disease or diabetes and having high
blood pressure.
African Caribbean women tend to carry excess
weight around their stomach area while African Caribbean
men tend to be more obese than other ethnic minority
groups in the UK.
Make sure you are accurately measuring your waist and
you've worked
out your BMI. Once you've got those measurements, you
can figure out where you are and what you need to do:
Maintaining a healthy weight
Getting to a healthy weight
Dealing with
obesity
Understand alcohol
Drinking too much alcohol is one of
the most common causes of hospital admission in the UK.
Smoking and your heart
Smoking damages the
arteries that provide your heart with food and oxygen, and
cigarettes contain harmful chemicals which can increase your risk
of having a heart attack. Giving up
smoking is the single most important thing you can do to improve
your heart health.
Did you know that after a year of quitting smoking, you could
decrease your risk of having a heart attack to half of that of a
non-smoker?
It’s never too late to give up
smoking!
Some tips
- Make a date to give up, and stick to it! Throw away all your
tobacco, lighters and ashtrays.
- Draw up a plan of action. Think about what could help you stop
smoking – such as using a nicotine-replacement product – and have
it ready before the date you plan to quit.
- Keep busy, to help take your mind off cigarettes. Try to change
your routine and avoid the shop where you usually buy
cigarettes.
- Distract yourself and change environment - go for a walk.
- Get support. Let your family and friends know you are quitting.
Some people find that talking to friends and relatives who have
stopped can be helpful.
- Treat yourself. If you can, use the money you are saving by not
smoking, to buy yourself something special.
- See how our
Stop Smoking booklet can help.
The following organisations may also be able to help:
Quitline - telephone
0800 00 22 00
NHS
Smoking Helpline - telephone 0800 022 4
332
ASH
(Action on Smoking and Health) -
telephone 020 7739 5902
Dealing with stress
Stress over a long period of time affects us all differently. It
may play a part in your risk of getting cardiovascular
disease, but more likely that it is the unhealthy habits
we adopt to help us cope that increases the risk.
Think about what affects you, how you cope and about any chances
you might be able to make. Coping with stress gives you lots of
tips on assessing your own level of stress and how to deal with
it.
More about dealing
with stress