Take some pressure off your heart with good food and good moves

That is, knowing how your heart works and how what you do can keep it in good shape or not. Today, a staggering 6.3 million people in South Africa have high blood pressure and many also live with high cholesterol, which causes a fatty build up and clogs arteries. Both of these lead to your heart working harder, becoming unhealthy and causing strokes or other chronic health problems.  

Fact is, as South Africans we have a genetic tendency for high blood pressure. Combine this with poor eating habits, low activity, inadequate screening, high alcohol intake, and obesity, and matters don’t look great for hearts and overall health. More than half of people between the ages of 35 and 74 in four rural communities had high blood pressure in a recent study by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of South Africa. The devastation of high blood pressure is evident in it causing one in every two strokes, four in every 10 heart attacks and six in every 10 cases of kidney disease.

While high blood pressure and high cholesterol can be managed, many people don’t even know they need treatment. Because people don’t often experience physical symptoms, high blood pressure or cholesterol can cause major damage while left unmanaged. So what can you do? The first thing is to know how your heart is doing.