How to improve your heart health in five easy ways

How to improve your heart health in five easy ways

Climbing a flight of stairs at home is just as good as a gym class when it comes to warding off a heart attack , according to scientists. Professor Maureen MacDonald, from McMaster University in Canada, and her team of researchers found that walking up 18 steps had the same benefits for the heart as a 45-minute aerobic class. “We’ve shown stair-climbing is a safe, efficient and feasible option for cardiac rehabilitation,” says MacDonald in the research published in Science Daily in May 2021. A 2019 study from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) found that the number of under-75s dying of heart disease had risen for the first time in 50 years. “What we’re talking about here is adults under the age of 65 – working age adults – dying of heart disease,” says Ashleigh Li, a senior cardiac nurse at the BHF. The study found that our increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and soaring rates of obesity and diabetes are pushing up the figures among younger people. "Heart disease used to be thought of as an old person's disease, and older men at that," says Li. "But what this study shows is that younger people, including women, are at risk." “Early