How Heart Health Affects Every Aspect of Life

Your heart is one of the busiest organs in your body. It’s saddled with the responsibility of pushing millions of gallons of blood to every part of the body throughout your life. In the average lifetime, the heart will beat about 2.5 billion times. By the same token, if anything goes wrong with the heart, the toll will be felt in every other area of your life. This is why maintaining a healthy heart is crucial to your overall wellbeing. Here are some of the ways that having healthy heart habits can help with other health conditions.

Menopause

Menopause can be associated with various health issues, including certain heart conditions. One significant co-occurring issue with menopause is a drop in estrogen. When this happens, the body responds with various symptoms that indicate the impact it has on the heart.

For example, diabetes, weight gain, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure are some of the conditions associated with lower estrogen. This may cause a wide range of complications which include shortness of breath, pressure in the chest, headaches, palpitations, aching jaw, swelling of the feet, and dizziness. While it is easy to want to attribute these to normal aging, they may indicate more serious issues if left unchecked. 

Pregnancy

Pregnancy is one of the most complicated stages for women, and the heart is often affected by the changes in your body during this time. This is because pregnancy puts more stress on your circulatory system. During this stage, your blood volume increases by 30% to 50% to support both you and your growing baby. This will require the heart to pump more blood each minute, causing an increase in your heart rate. So it’s not surprising that it usually takes several weeks after delivery for the heart to fully return to normal.

Conception Issues and Miscarriages

Have you been struggling to conceive? Have you ever experienced a miscarriage? If so, then it might be time to pay more attention to your heart health. Research has shown that there is a link between conception, miscarriage, and heart health.

In a study by Cambridge University, researchers showed that having one miscarriage before the birth of your first child increases your risk of developing heart disease by 50%. The odds are far greater for those who have had more than one or recurrent miscarriage. It’s not clear whether this is due to their overall health before the pregnancy or as a result of the miscarriages themselves. Nevertheless, this shows the role of heart health in every aspect of pregnancy.

Sexual Health

Your heart plays a bigger role in your sex life than you might imagine. Many of the symptoms of poor heart health work together to negatively impact sexual enjoyment. For instance, the heart is responsible for circulating blood to the vessels for sexual arousal, and decreased blood flow as a result of poor heart health can also affect vaginal lubrication, which could result in recurring yeast infections.

How to Move Forward

The good news is you can prevent or significantly reduce the risk of experiencing most cardiovascular issues by living a lifestyle that supports quality heart health. You should get plenty of rest, monitor your weight, manage anxiety, exercise regularly, and eat healthy, nutritional foods. Most importantly, however, you need to invest in your own heart health by following the advice of your physician.