Heart Disease is Preventable

February is national heart month. This means the heart and what we should be doing to stay heart healthy is getting a lot of attention. This is good news because we may think we know and are doing everything we can do stay healthy heart wise. But this isn't always true.

By now, everyone probably knows that women should especially be concern about their heart health? Why? Heart disease is the number one cause of women's death each year. It used to be that women were not getting the information they needed to help fight this ongoing academic. Doctors were paying more attention to men and their chances of developing a heart attack or heart disease. This is no longer the case. Now both men and women are encouraged to take the necessary steps today to keep from dealing with heart disease and or heart attacks in their future.

Most of the steps we need to be taking are simple and are things we know we should be doing, anyway. Yet, we aren't. Here are a few examples of some of these simple steps.

1. Eat more foods that are red in color (one reason for the Go Red for Women campaign). Foods like tomatoes, peppers and berries are filled with antioxidants that will help keep our arteries clear.

2. Be sure to check your blood pressure on a regular basis.

3. Exercise. No, you don't have to be young to exercise and you don't even have to join a gym. You just have to get off the sofa and move. Go for a walk, take your dog. Take a hike. Go for a bike ride. Of course, if you can join a gym, take a class or if you will actually use a treadmill go and buy one. But you must do something and you must do it on a regular basis. If you are not young, remember if you are reading this you are not dead there is some form of exercise you can do. Find it and do it. No excuses. If you exercise your heart, you will help keep it beating longer.

4. Know your family history. If your parents or siblings have heart disease or high blood pressure, you are more prone to have it, too. This means you need to work even harder.