Exercise Your Way to Heart Health
Heart-healthy living involves understanding your risk, making healthy choices, and reducing your chances of getting heart disease. By taking preventive measures, you can lower your risk of developing heart disease that could lead to a heart attack. You can also improve your overall health and well-being.
One of the most effective ways to promote heart health is exercising regularly. Regular physical activity can help you lose weight, improve physical fitness, and lower many heart disease risk factors, such as “bad” LDL cholesterol levels, while increasing “good” HDL cholesterol levels to manage high blood pressure better. Exercise can also help you lower stress, improve your mental health, and lower your risk for other conditions such as type 2 diabetes, depression, and cancer.
Aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking, running, biking, swimming, or other forms of exercise that make your heart beat faster and your body use more oxygen than usual, is most beneficial to your heart and lungs. And the more active you are, the more you benefit.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommends that each week, adults get at least 2.5-5 hours a week of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity or 1.25-2.5 hours a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity or a combination of both moderate-intensity and vigorous-intensity activity.
