The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Heart Health Tips: Everyday Habits That Protect Your Heart | Ep. 128

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 128

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Heart health tips are more than just diet advice - they’re about the everyday habits that keep your heart strong and resilient. In this episode of The Wellness Connection Podcast, Fiona Kane shares practical ways to protect your heart through better sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress management, and lifestyle choices.

From reducing harmful addictions like smoking or excessive caffeine, to understanding how gratitude and happiness improve heart health, you’ll discover simple, science-backed strategies that make a big difference. If you want to prevent heart disease, boost your energy, and improve your overall well-being, these tips are for you.

Jackson's Instagram (the toddler who has inspired me): https://www.instagram.com/jacksonsnm_journey/

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay



Fiona Kane:

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. I'm going to give you some heart health tips today. So the first thing I wanted to talk about is one thing that people don't think about too much and I've heard Dr Ross Walker, the cardiologist, talking about some of these things before as well is he talks about addictions. We forget sometimes that addictions are part of the issue. So when I talk to my clients about whether or not you should have more good fats or more protein or whatever they need to do to support their heart health, part of the issue isn't always. It's not just about what you need to add, it's what you need to take away, and sometimes there are other things that you're using, that you're having them instead of actually just having real food, or you're doing those things instead of doing things that are beneficial for your health. So, partly the things that we're addicted to, sometimes take away the time or the money or the hunger or whatever it is for the things that would be beneficial to you, besides the fact of those things potentially being harmful to you as well. So those addictions could be many things. It could be addiction to drugs or alcohol, which, of course, is going to be really, really damaging to all of your health, including your heart health. It could be addiction to food, and I've talked about before using the word addiction. I don't really like using the word addiction in association with food, because the idea, our solution for addiction, is avoiding the thing, and you can't avoid food, so I generally prefer to use the term habituation but essentially eating in an unhealthy way where you know you struggle to stop the food. Or addiction to drugs and alcohol, as I was talking about before. But it might also be other things. It might be addiction to games, to scrolling on the internet, being on TikTok all of the time, it might be gambling, whatever it is.

Fiona Kane:

But essentially when you're doing something that takes up a lot of your time and energy, and often these things cause you a lot of stress, so they either cause you a lot of stress because they themselves are damaging, like the drugs and alcohol, or they might cause you a lot of stress. So they either cause you a lot of stress because they themselves are damaging, like the drugs and alcohol, or they might cause you a lot of stress because, like the time and effort, you're doing it. So if you're spending all of your time on the internet and you should be you could be working or doing something useful. Well, that's going to be stressful because it's going to reduce how much whether or not you get a job, or whether or not you get your work done throughout the day, or whether or not you just do life things right. So if you're spending hours and hours every day on the internet, you know there's a lot of life things that aren't happening for you right? So it's going to affect your life one way or the other, whether it's your job or your relationships or your income or whatever. It is Also being online all the time. When you're in your online world, sometimes it affects our ability to actually have relationships because we're not dealing with people in the real world, we're sort of just dealing with this sort of online stuff.

Fiona Kane:

So there's a lot of different ways that addictions can look, but generally there are things that take away your time and energy, cause you stress and or cause you physical damage. So when we're looking at heart health, we do need to look at what are those things. That could also include smoking or vaping or those kinds of things, and I'm sure there's things I've missed out, but you get the idea. Basically it's something that you can possibly feel the need to do, that is not adding to your life in a positive way and potentially is detracting. And drugs too. It's like one of those things that sometimes I've had clients come to see me and say you know, I want to learn how to eat healthily. And then they've got I don't know they're using cocaine or something like that and look each to their own. You do what you want to do, but don't think using cocaine isn't going to be damaging for your heart health, right?

Fiona Kane:

We know that caffeine itself is really damaging to heart health and people who overdo caffeine and it doesn't have to be that much for some people they can end up having something like a cardiac arrest, which not many people survive. And that actually did happen to my brother and he was overdoing the pre-workout drinks and caffeinated sort of energy drinks and things like that. I can't say for sure it's what caused it, but he was 33 and fit and healthy and he had a cardiac arrest. He was lucky he survived because at the time he was a policeman and he was with other policemen and they did CPR and ambos came quickly and all that sort of stuff. So that's a story that ended well. But he was just overdoing the caffeine, right? So just caffeine itself can be too much for your heart, let alone something like cocaine.

Fiona Kane:

So I've had clients say, oh, why Is cocaine going to be a problem for my heart? Well, of course it is right, because what we've got to think about with a lot of these drugs, a lot of these drugs will speed up our heart or slow down our heart, or sometimes they do both. People will have something like an upper at the same time as they'll have it with alcohol, right. So a lot of drugs people take when they drink alcohol. So they're having something to slow down your system and something to speed up at the same time. Not good for your heart, very possible that it could kill you. So please consider, you know, do what you want if you're an adult, but just don't think that you're not damaging your heart or you're not causing yourself big risk there. Right, and it's great to have a healthy diet. But if you have a healthy diet and you're overdoing it on the drugs or using those sorts of drugs at all, it could be an issue, and actually not even just illicit drugs, it could actually be prescribed drugs as well.

Fiona Kane:

You've always got to assess whatever treatments you're using and whether or not they are suitable for you and whether or not they're helping you or whether or not they might be causing you damage. More often than not, it's things like kidney and liver damage that drugs can cause. But all damage in the body, those damage to any of your organs, may or may not affect your heart, ultimately the body. Those damage to any of your organs may or may not affect your heart ultimately. So okay, addictions is one thing. So the next thing is you know good sleep habits.

Fiona Kane:

So there is a lot of evidence to say that. You know people with sleep apnea, people who are sort of not breathing properly throughout the night. There's a really high risk of heart disease associated with that, because you're just not getting enough oxygen and you're not getting enough quality sleep. And our sleep time is where a lot of really important things happen in the body. So a lot of that rest and digest stuff, where your body detoxifies, where your brain kind of deals with maybe whatever's going on throughout the day and files things in the right spot and essentially your body does all of its processes it needs to do to recover and replenish. And if you're not getting healthy sleep and you're awake a lot of the night and not getting oxygen, that's really going to affect you.

Fiona Kane:

So the other thing too is that you know, I see this with people where they say that I'm tired all of the time and then I ask them what time they go to bed and they say, well, I've been watching a TV show till two in the morning or playing on the internet or whatever it is. It's just not feasible, especially not long-term. So if you're wondering why you're tired and you're going to bed at 2am, there's a clue, right, and it might sound like it's something really silly to say, but we often don't. I don't know. It's a weird thing how we kind of just go, oh I'm tired, and we don't stop and look at our own, the choices that we've made and how those choices impact.

Fiona Kane:

So obviously, going to bed at a reasonable time and getting you know at least seven hours sleep is best for most people. I don't think people, even the people who say they can do with it I don't think you should be getting less than six hours and it could be split up, especially as we get older. We don't always sleep as well, but sometimes older people will do two shifts or something but getting enough sleep and having really really good sleep habits because if you're up until 2am and then you're going to getting up at 6am or 7am, that's not enough sleep. And the thing is then, what adds to that then is then you're going to be tired and because you're going to be tired, you're going to make poor choices. So whether or not that's like higher risk of having a car accident, all those things which is part of it, but it's also you're going to be reaching for lots of caffeine and sugar and stuff to pep you up because you're going to feel tired. So the more tired we are, we make poor choices and either we do exercise but we hurt ourselves because we're fatigued, or we don't exercise because we're too tired to right. So it's kind of one of those things that these things seep into each other, right? So if you're doing the addiction thing, you're probably not taking time to do the exercise. If you're up all night or not getting enough sleep, then you're probably too tired to do the exercise or more likely to hurt yourself, you're more likely to eat junk food, that sort of thing. So it's kind of the thing with all of these things is they do, like I said, they bleed into each other and drive each other. So getting good quality sleep is really important.

Fiona Kane:

So the next one on the list is nutrition, and of course I've talked about nutrition a lot here and I'm not going to go into it in a lot of detail here. But essentially, good quality, healthy diet, real food, where you're having protein with every meal, you're having plenty of colorful vegetables, a little bit of fruit, especially the colorful berry kind you know, like things like blueberries, those things that are sort of chock-block full of antioxidants and lots of nutrition. Eating things like eggs, which are really healthy, not leaving out the yolks and good quality fats. So that could be the oils that are in fish and or, taking fish oil, it could be your olive oil, the fats that come naturally in food, like I said, like the eggs, things like walnuts, so those avocados, that kind of thing. So basically, a healthy diet with plenty of good fats, lovely serves of protein and the majority of your carbs being colorful vegetables and some fruit. Generally speaking, that's a really, really healthy diet and you might have a little bit on top of that, a little bit of bread or some other kind of grains or rice or whatever it is for you that that works well for you. But generally speaking, if the core diet is, you know, the protein, the good fats and the colorful fruit and vegetables, that's a really good way to be.

Fiona Kane:

Now, what's happened here? For some reason, my computer fell asleep. Okay, we're back. Don't think it stopped, it's just my computer went off. So, anyway, that's just a general idea. With eating a healthy diet, it's essentially a healthy diet that helps balance your blood glucose levels and when you're balancing your blood glucose levels, then that helps prevent things like type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance and that's one of the biggest things from a dietary point of view that actually drives heart disease. So it's a really good way to go is to eat a really really balanced diet.

Fiona Kane:

So the next thing on our list is actually exercise. Exercise is really important and it's amazing the number of people you speak to and they just don't understand the importance of exercise. Exercise is really important and it's amazing the number of people you speak to and they just don't understand the importance of exercise. But it is really, really important for heart health. So obviously we know most of us have heard about it's called cardio right, where you essentially get puffed. You get puffed. You do cardio, whether it's going for a walk or whatever it is, but moving your body enough that you get puffed, obviously that's using your heart muscle. It's good for your heart muscle. Like all of the other muscles, they're there to be used, right. So it's using them to the point where they work well and essentially what happens is when we do exercise.

Fiona Kane:

So, in regards to heart health, I was looking up on Dr Avadia's website and he was saying that heart training is a central component of metabolic health. Which heart health is part of metabolic health, he says, one of the most significant things you can do to reduce your risk of heart attack, strokes and similar illnesses. He says that research shows that 30 minutes of exercise per day can vastly improve cardiovascular health, strengthen muscle walls and, essentially, when you strengthen those muscle walls, you're able to pump more blood around your body, therefore get more oxygen around your body, and the more blood you get with each contraction, the brain gets more oxygen, right? So the result is heart stress is reduced, blood pressure drops and your body regains control over its metabolic processes. Right? For those of you watching this, I'm sorry you're seeing me tap on my screen. I can't use my mouse at the moment so I'm having to touch the screen, so it's a bit weird watching it. Yeah, I apologize for that. So anyway, he just said regular exercise may even lead to improved myocardial perfusion. So essentially, I think that is your heart muscle actually getting the nutrition and getting the blood flow around within the heart itself An increased high density lipoprotein so HGL is considered to be the healthy cholesterol and reduce cardiac stress.

Fiona Kane:

You know, he said you know heart focus exercise is neither complex nor time consuming, since exercise is a cumulative function. A few minutes of dedicated time throughout the day can make a significant difference in your cardiovascular health and I've really got to support this. You know, I think that we underestimate how important it is to move our bodies and we think that we need a whole lot of time. And look, it's great if you can take half an hour out and go for a walk, or half an hour and go and do something, but you can also include it in what you do daily. So it might be that while you're boiling the kettle, you're leaning up against the wall and doing push-ups against the wall or something like that. You're leaning up against the wall and doing push-ups against the wall or something like that.

Fiona Kane:

Now, if you're at risk for falls and fractures and you haven't done much exercise before, get advice from someone who knows who's an exercise expert and who's an expert and what's right for you. But the general idea would be just moving your body and ways to move your body that is safe for you, and if you're not quite sure, get advice from a professional who knows how to, who can tell you how to do that. But part of that is also doing sort of some sort of resistance training, and so what I just described is resistance training. Any type of weight training is resistance training. But weight training can even be if you're pushing your body up against the wall. That's a type of weight training, right, because you can use your body for the resistance. It might be pool walking I actually really like pool walking, I really enjoy that exercise or it might be swimming itself all right.

Fiona Kane:

But just, we know that exercise is really important and it's not just important for your heart muscle, so it's partly that. So what we do know is, with resistance training you do get improved muscle strength and tone and it does help protect your joints from injury. But the other thing that you get from resistance training is you get better bone health. I've talked about it here before. So essentially, the more of that resistance training you do, when you build up muscle and you've got your joints working a little bit better, your joints are a bit stronger and your bones are stronger, well then now you are overall stronger and usually then you're going to be less likely to fall, less likely to hurt yourself when you fall, and just more stable, so essentially functional.

Fiona Kane:

So when you do exercise dating including resistance training you really help to keep yourself functional, so you're able to stay on your feet, you're able not to fall over, you're able to do the basics of everyday life, so you're able to toilet yourself, dress yourself, do all the things you need to do, and so doing the exercise really helps you maintain that independence. The more independence you have, the more you can do those things, the more you'll be regular exercising, because even just getting up and doing all those things is moving your body, whereas if you're not doing that and you're losing strength and you lose your stability, then we tend to spend a lot more time sitting, which is really bad for heart health, right. So also, regular exercise is just helps. It's part of helping you maintain a healthy weight. It's a little bit more complicated than that but it's certainly part of it.

Fiona Kane:

But also, you know when you're doing exercise you're you know you're getting blood flow and of course you're getting blood flow. It's going to reduce that cognitive decline. So it's really good for your heart because for your brain. So you've got to think about if you have a healthy heart and it's flowing properly and the vessels are clear and everything's working the way it should. Well, that's pumping oxygen and nutrients around your body. So that heart is actually what keeps all the other organs healthy. So you know it has that flow on effect. So it's also going to you know that's why metabolic health will affect your brain function and quite often be a driver of dementia or mini strokes or things like that, where you're just not getting that blood flow from your heart's, not pumping the blood up to your brain. So we do know that you're going to maintain better cognitive health.

Fiona Kane:

Also, the other thing about exercise is it's because it moves your body and gets your body moving. Also you get those contractions as far as moving your bowel. So it kind of just keeps everything moving. You get the flow where you need to go, the circulation where you need to go, you get your body's able to. You know you sweat out whatever you don't need. It moves your bowel so you move things through. So essentially, it gets everything working the way it's supposed to. Also, you know you just get an increase of stamina and increase of ability of what you can do when you're doing more exercise. So you know exercise is really really important and also actually it's really good for blood sugar control, and blood sugar control is part of metabolic health, and the more you have blood sugar control, the more that you are going to reduce your risk of heart disease. The other thing, too, is regular exercise also makes you tired, and so you're more likely to be tired and you're more likely to sleep well. So there's a lot of things there that make it really, really supportive of having really, really good heart health in regards to exercise. So don't underestimate exercise as part of how you manage your heart health.

Fiona Kane:

Number five on this list is actually happiness. Now, you know Dr Ross Walker. He says you know, the best drug on the planet is happiness. In each moment, cultivate the attitude of I choose peace over this or I'm not going to give you the power to cause my heart attack and, most importantly, develop service mentality, live through each moment with the attitude of how may I serve rather than what's in it for me and you know I've talked about that before on here is that what we do know is that when we release a hormone called oxytocin, oxytocin is really really good for heart health because oxytocin helps widen your blood vessels, so it reduces your blood pressure and you've got that lovely flow of of of blood going through.

Fiona Kane:

And, uh, we get oxytocin from service. Not service as in being forced to do things, but actually kind of just having the attitude of oh, how can I help? So you know, I'm going to go and volunteer today or I'm going to um, going to do something, I'm going to do an act of kindness to someone today, whatever it is. But when we're in that place of what can I do to help others? How can I help others? How can I be of service, when we're in that frame of mind, we do produce more oxytocin from that. Even just like things like babies when you cuddle a baby, when you breastfeed a baby, or even just like when you're playing with a with a baby, they smile, whatever that smile you, that gives you oxytocin, right? So we get oxytocin from things like hugs, from things like cute babies or might be cute animals or a cute inspirational video. So that's why those videos are so popular, of that guy who does all those good deeds and gives people millions of dollars and it helps them. You know or or you watch, even just watching videos of, you know the doctor. Is it Dr? Is it Ted Knopfs who was going overseas and curing blindness in people? You know amazing, and you watch those videos and you produce oxytocin. So partly we produce oxytocin from that kind of cuddle factor or from that feeling happy and enjoyment and cute babies, that sort of thing. But we also get it from doing good things.

Fiona Kane:

But the other thing is too that when we are thinking outwards as far as how can I serve, we're not in our head constantly. So instead of being constantly in our head and thinking, oh, this, this, that, blah, blah, blah, we're kind of just forgetting. Forget that how can I help someone else? And because you're in the mode of doing something for someone else, you're not obsessing yourself, you know, and so sometimes it's a really, really good way of getting you out of your head and you know I've talked before in regards to happiness, and happiness isn't. You know? It doesn't mean you're walking around happy constantly. No one's walking around happy constantly. It's more just a an attitude of being grateful. An attitude of being grateful, an attitude of service, an attitude of looking for the good in things and looking for I've done a previous episode, not that long ago, where I talked about looking at glimmers versus triggers. So looking for glimmers the glimmers is the butterfly, whatever it is that you're seeing and so we reduce our stress and we are more happy when we are able to just look for the good in life, to, like I said, give service, see what is what is beautiful, but also just to be, to be real. Uh, being real doesn't mean being necessarily being cynical and negative, because I know there is a lot of negative things in the world, but being real is just a certain acceptance. Okay, I accept that this is a situation, but you know what can I do? And and just working with within that, you know.

Fiona Kane:

Now I recently I saw a video, I saw a few videos. There's a Instagram channel. I shall find the name of the Instagram channel and I'll link it into the notes here because it's such a lovely channel. So there's a little boy I think he's in the US somewhere and his name is Jackson and he's got some sort of muscular disease. I think he's about two years old now and he's got some sort of muscular disease where he has trouble with swallowing and he has trouble with everything that you need muscles for, which is everything right, which is why I talk about muscles, so they're so important. You don't realize how important they are until you see someone who has muscles that don't work properly right, or until you start getting older and you can't do things. But this baby is so cute, he's absolutely beautiful and his parents are recording him.

Fiona Kane:

He, I think they were told he's got the G-tube, which is basically fed directly into his stomach, and they were told he'd never be able to eat. But he's able to eat now. He can't solely eat food, he has to still have the tube but which he calls tubey, so cute. But he you know, it's a fact. You can see how hard it is for him to eat food and to swallow, but he's just, he's happy and he's and he's uh, he's got a lovely spirit and you just see him and you see him trying so hard to do life, the basic things in life. He's still. He's trying to get strong enough so he can hold his head up. He's trying to get strong enough so he can walk. He's trying to be, you know, be able to swallow.

Fiona Kane:

Probably he's really going to think when he's swallowing and really, you know, and you know he's had so much struggle in his life but he's got such a beautiful spirit and beautiful personality and sometimes things like that, like when I come across a video like that, I sort of start thinking what problems do I have? Problems? No, not compared to him, right? So you know he's. Not only is he beautiful, inspirational little boy, but he's also um, and he's just like just beautiful. He exudes this beautiful, beautiful energy, uh, but also he's just like. It's a reality check, right. What little boy is doing the best he can. His parents are doing the best they can by the looks of things and um and good on them.

Fiona Kane:

Uh and um, but just um, you know, uh, when we have a bit of a reality check, when we're a bit more in tune with what do we have, so, if you're able to get up and walk around, if you're able to swallow your food, if you're able to access clean, good food, if you have electricity, all those things. So just remembering so happiness is important, but happiness is not so much going like outwardly looking for other people to make us happy or things or whatever to make us, you know. So just remembering so happiness is important, but happiness is it's not so much going like outwardly looking for other people to make us happy or things or whatever to make us happy. It's more kind of if you're more happy, if you're just in general grateful for what you do have, if you're grateful that you can go out and get food and you've got access to it and it's safe and all of those things. So, so, yeah, so, so that's part of the sort of strategies for the principles for good heart health. So I just thought it's important to mention all those things.

Fiona Kane:

I've talked to a lot about managing stress before. You can find a lot of episodes where I talk about breathing or different things in regards to food and mood and whatever it is. But I think if you eat well and you're moving your body and you're making sure you're getting plenty of sleep and you're really kind of avoiding and reducing addictions and get sort of support for those, if that's what you need to do, you know, and we're sort of embracing an attitude of gratitude and kind of choosing to be happy and choosing to make the best of things. That is all really really good for your heart health. So remember that it's really important.

Fiona Kane:

Your heart is a muscle and it does need your support to stay healthy and if your heart's doing well, it will support all other things and, like I said, circulation to all the other places, including your brain. So it's funny because sometimes when we talk about brain health and heart health, we talk about two different things, and I get that there might be slightly different, but really not really, because it all comes down to circulation. So you need all the nutrients to go to your brain, so your brain's got to function right. So you need the circulation, so you need the heart health. But not only that. It's like when we talk about, you know, healthy blood vessels and all that, again it's heart and it's brain and you know. So they're all connected and a healthy heart diet is really a diet that's really good for your metabolic health and really healthy metabolic health is really good for your brain. So you know, I think that we forget sometimes, we separate all of the bits and pieces and think that they're different things, but ultimately, the way you eat for heart health is going to also be good for your brain and for other things as well.

Fiona Kane:

So, anyway, I hope that was useful for you and I thank you for listening to the podcast. Please like, share and subscribe. Share this episode with friends or family and you can also please you know comment on it. Tell me what you do, what's helpful for you, and just remember, you know, this is a podcast where I like to have, you know, real conversations about things that matter, and I think that we've really got to get real about heart health. And so, yeah, I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you all again next week. Thanks, bye-bye.

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