2893 Living healthy with heart failure
0 (0 Likes / 0 Dislikes)
As with any health condition, your health and fitness can help limit the impact of the disease on your life.
The same is true with heart failure.
This video tells you how you can lead a healthy life,
and keep the symptoms of your
heart failure under better control.
Let’s start with your diet.
Minimise how much salt you have.
Salt holds onto water in your
body and can worsen your symptoms.
So, don’t add salt to your food and
use herbs and other seasonings instead.
Avoid cheese, bacon, canned soups, crisps, smoked fish
and foods with a high salt warning on the label.
We do not recommend salt substitutes
as these are not good for people with heart failure.
Reduce your saturated fat intake
from dairy products, cakes and sausages.
Drink semi-skimmed milk instead of full cream milk.
It has the same calcium content, but much less fat.
Eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
Frozen vegetables are a cheaper alternative and
have a good supply of nutrients.
Eat at least two portions of fish a week, including one portion of oily fish such as mackerel, salmon or sardines.
The British Heart Foundation website
has lots of recipes to help
you make these changes
and help you to lead a healthy life.
There are some other changes you can make to your lifestyle to help your condition.
Most importantly, don’t smoke.
Stopping smoking is the best
way to increase your life expectancy,
and it has a beneficial impact on
those around you, especially children.
Limit your alcohol intake to within the recommended limits as alcohol is known to worsen heart failure.
Alcohol also contains a lot of calories, with no nutritional benefit, so it can lead to weight gain.
If you are overweight, your heart has to
work harder to pump blood around your body
which can worsen your condition.
By eating healthily and taking regular exercise,
you can aim for a healthy body weight.
Some people with heart failure can find exercise tiring,
so do what you can and gradually
increase what you can tolerate
Do not think that you have to run miles to lose weight.
Start by taking the stairs instead of the lift, and getting off the bus one stop earlier so you have a longer walk home.
Taken together, these small
changes can start to make a big difference
to how you feel and the impact
your condition has on your life.