While Valentine’s Day comes once a year, keeping your heart healthy is something 
you can do for yourself every day.
What’s your heart age?
If you’re over 30 years old you can find out your heart age here. (Open with Chrome rather than IE)
The results will help you to;
- Understand how your lifestyle choices affect your heart age
- Why your blood pressure and cholesterol levels are so important
- How to reduce your heart age through diet and exercise.
Ways to improve your heart health age
What you eat, how much you move, whether you smoke and controlling your cholesterol and blood pressure are five things that can have a big impact on your heart.
**Click into each section for videos, resources and top tips**
- Eating a healthy heart diet
- Healthy eating for a healthy heart is about balance so it doesn’t focus on one type of food or nutrient, but rather what you eat over days, weeks and months. For all the food facts (not fads!) read BHF’s guide.
Our top tips; eat more fruit and vegetables, choose whole grain if you can, and opt for healthy fats – things like avocado, nuts and fish.
- Moving more
- Doing regular exercise reduces your risk of having a heart attack or developing heart disease. It can also help strengthen your bones and muscles, make you feel more energetic, happier and relaxed.
Our top tip; start small and work your way up to the recommended 30-60 minutes of exercise a day. Not sure where to start? Try one of our exercise programmes/workouts available on The Insider:
- Basic exercise and stretching routines.
- 30 day cardio challenge
- 30 day Full body circuit
- 30 day core challenge
- 30 minute full body circuit
- 20 minute stretch
- Abs challenge
- Workout with Nuffield Health
- Zumba with Neil
Remember you can also take part in our virtual yoga classes held by qualified yoga instructor Rachel Ison every Wednesday at 12:00 – 12:45 GMT. The classes are free to attend, open to shore and fleet colleagues, and suitable for all ability levels.
For those sitting more than ever before, it’s important to stretch and build movement into everyday routines. While this short video is intended for home workers, it is suitable for all desk users – watch now and follow along.
Have a look at our Display Screen Equipment (DSE) page on The Insider for a reminder of how best to set up your desk to avoid poor posture and injury.
- Going smoke free
- Smoking damages the blood vessels leading to your heart, brain and other parts of your body and makes you four times more likely to die of heart attack or stroke and three times more likely to die from sudden cardiac death.
Our top tips; have a read of the ‘No Smoking Day’ article on The Insider from 2018. It’s packed with useful tips and the opportunity to sign up to the NHS’ 28 day stop smoking support programme.
- Controlling your cholesterol levels
- Everyone produces Cholesterol naturally; in fact it’s essential for the normal functioning of your body. However, foods can also contain cholesterol that is not good for the body and stick to the walls of your arteries. This build-up can create blockages in your arteries and contribute to increasing your risk of a heart attack or stroke.
Our top tip; lower your saturated fat and trans fat levels by cutting down on foods like pizza, cakes, biscuits, pastries and deep fried food.
- Managing your blood pressure
- Blood pressure is the pressure of your blood on the walls of your arteries as your heart pumps it around your body. It’s a vital part of how your heart and circulation work. Blood pressure that’s high over a long time is one of the main risk factors for heart disease. As you get older, the chances of having ongoing high blood pressure increases.
Our top tip; cut down on salt by cutting back on processed food (which typically contain high salt levels) and avoid adding additional salt to your meals.
If want to find out more about heart heath visit The British Heart Foundations website for resources (including top tips, people stories and healthy recipes) and support.
Speak to your medical team on any of our ships, your Doctor or a medical professional via our Virtual GP service*. (*shore side colleagues only) or seek support via our support pages on The Insider.
For those on board we’ve pulled out some useful resources available via Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), Compsych.