A look at cardiac rehabilitation
In Canada, heart disease and stroke takes a life every 5 minutes. 2.6 million adults age 20 and over live with a diagnosis of heart disease. The good news is 8 in 10 cases of premature heart disease and stroke are preventable through healthy lifestyle behaviours such as smoking cessation, healthy eating, getting moving. This has led to experts utilizing a strategy geared towards this population called cardiac rehabilitation. A combination of education, emotional support, exercise training and risk management is prescribed.
Research shows that in the short term, home-based cardiac rehabilitation done independently or with a facilitator and supervised centre-based rehab delivers comparable results when it comes to improving exercise capacity, health related quality of lie and number of deaths. The jury is still out on longer term impacts of home-based strategies for cardiac rehabilitation.
Heart healthy tips include:
Don’t smoke. Not smoking or quitting smoking reduces your risk of developing heart disease and not smoking may even increase the “good” cholesterol in your blood. It also reduces your risk of having a heart attack, stroke and common cancers.
Eat a wider variety of foods. According to Canada’s Food Guide, as part of a balanced diet we should enjoy a variety of foods and choose lower-fat foods more often.
Get moving. As little as 60 minutes a day of accumulated physical activity will help keep your heart in shape. Not sure how to start? Try the Physical Activity Guide for some ideas.
Have regular checkups. Include a measurement of your blood cholesterol level. You can also be tested for diabetes, one of the major risk factors for heart disease.
Sources: McMaster University Heart and Stroke and heartandstroke.ca
Photo: CanStock
