Heart health impacts each and every one of us, but a lot of people don’t take steps to prevent it.
“About 90% of cardiovascular disease is preventable,” Dr. Carlos Gonzalez-Lengua said, a cardiology doctor at Cleveland Clinic Florida.
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According to Dr. Gonzalez-Lengua, the first step to maintaining good heart health is maintaining a good diet.
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“We advocate [for] what we call a Mediterranean diet,” he said, “Which means fresh vegetables and usually fatty fish such as salmon.”
If you’re a regular drinker, Dr. Gonzalez-Lengua recommends lowering your intake to one glass of red wine a day.
Other things you can do to maintain good heart health include exercising regularly, lowering stress and going to your annual checkups. But, Dr. Gonzalez-Lengua says the best thing you can do is to quit smoking.
“Smoking is probably the easiest free factor to correct meaning is a very strong factor,” he said, “Once you stop smoking after five years to probably go back to you to like people who don’t smoke, but if you continue smoking, it gives you a very high risk that you develop all types of cardiovascular problems.”