Yahoo Lifestyle This Simple After-Breakfast Habit Is A Great Way To Support Your Heart
Each morning is a new opportunity to prioritize your health. Starting the day with a healthy morning routine sets the tone and can motivate you to continue to make health-conscious decisions all day.
If one of your goals this year is prioritizing your heart health, consider modeling your morning routine after a cardiologist. To do this, it’s not only what you eat for breakfast that matters, but what you do after you’re done eating too.
Related: The Heart Health Issue Nearly 1 in 5 People Don't Know They Have, According to Cardiologists
The After-Breakfast Habit a Cardiologist Recommends
Dr. Li Zhou, MD, PhD, the Medical Director of the Women's Heart Program at Norton Heart & Vascular Institute at Norton Healthcare, says that she likes to start the day with a breakfast that incorporates fruit and nuts, two heart-healthy foods. Then, she does something that even many people who take time to eat skip out on doing: drinking a cup of water.
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Starting the day by drinking water may sound simple, but hydration is important for heart health. Staying hydrated—it’s recommended to drink eight, 8 ounce glasses of water a day—is linked to lowering the risk of diabetes and heart disease. Scientific research shows that not drinking enough water negatively impacts the heart by impairing blood pressure regulation.
Related: Does Coffee Hydrate You?
When you’re done drinking your cup of water after breakfast, you can tack on another heart-healthy habit to your morning routine by going on a short walk, something that Dr. Daniel Hermann, MD, an interventional cardiologist with Memorial Hermann, recommends doing each morning. “A heart-healthy habit to adopt after breakfast is getting some daily exercise. It can be as simple as going for a brisk 20-minute walk. This habit is a little investment in your cardiovascular health that pays off big over time,” he says.
Dr. Hermann says that making a habit of taking a short walk after breakfast has both immediate benefits as well as long-term ones. In the immediate, he says that this habit helps improve digestion, helps with blood sugar regulation and stress relief. Long-term, he says it can help with overall cardiovascular health, weight management, improved endurance and muscle tone “Regular physical activity is linked to lower rates of depression and anxiety,” Dr. Hermann adds.
Especially since more people are working from home in these post-pandemic days, not as many people are walking as part of their commute. If you used to commute to work, you might have walked for 20 minutes in the morning without even realizing it. But if you work from home, it requires being more purposeful about getting your steps in.
The Morning Habit to Avoid, According to Cardiologists
Starting the day by having a cup of water and going on a walk after breakfast is a great way to support your cardiovascular health in the morning, but there’s one habit cardiologists warn against: Skipping breakfast. Dr. Deepak Talreja, MD, FACC, the Director of Cardiology at Sentara Healthcare, says that while many Americans skip eating in the morning, he says breakfast is an important opportunity to benefit your heart.
“A healthy and balanced breakfast with good nutrition consisting of fiber, natural vitamins from unprocessed fruits and veggies and whole grains can set one up for success. We are working longer and longer hours in the daily rat race, and as a result, we often shortchange this important meal of the day” Dr. Talreja says.
Dr. Talreja explains that making it a habit of having a nutrient-rich breakfast can lower the risk of heart attack and stroke by reducing cholesterol and inflammation. It can also prevent hunger-induced snacking on less healthy items during the day. One scientific study found that men who skipped breakfast had a 27% greater risk of cardiovascular disease than men who ate breakfast—that’s a pretty noticeable difference! Scientific research shows that skipping breakfast is linked with higher blood pressure, obesity and diabetes—all risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Zhou recommends eating 20 different types of nutrient-rich foods a day as a way to get a wide range of the vitamins and nutrients the body needs. This can certainly be harder to accomplish if you cut out one of the three meals we eat a day.
With all of this in mind, starting the day by eating a nutrient-rich breakfast, drinking a cup of water and going on a short walk is a great morning routine for heart health. Consider these three habits the trifecta of cardiovascular health. Your cardiologist would certainly approve!
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Sources
Dr. Li Zhou, MD, PhD, Medical Director of the Women's Heart Program at Norton Heart & Vascular Institute at Norton Healthcare
Dr. Daniel Hermann, MD, interventional cardiologist with Memorial Hermann
Dr. Deepak Talreja, MD, FACC, Director of Cardiology at Sentara Healthcare
