This Is Your Circulatory System | Part 3
How to take good care of your circulatory system and prevent cardiovascular disease.
Welcome to The Feel Good Life! A newsletter about health, prevention, empathy and hope. I’m currently writing a brand new series called Basics Matter—in which we are exploring one human system per month for six months. This series is of free access to everyone. If you’re new, you can get started with the series right here.
Hello!
In February we have been learning about the Circulatory System: how it looks like, how it works, and what happens when it gets sick.
Now it’s time to tackle the most important part when learning about health, and that is: Prevention.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, prevention is defined as “the action of stopping something from happening or arising.”
This is exactly what we want in health: to take action towards stopping illness from happening (as best as possible). Nature has its own course, yes, but our actions, big or small, will always influence one way or another such course. Everything towards improving ourselves - physically, mentally and emotionally - will undoubtedly lead to better health and an improved sense of wellbeing.
For these reasons, preventive work is coming more and more to the forefront in healthcare. I personally feel hopeful about this shift. It has allowed me to fully step into health education, giving my patients, readers and anyone who crosses my path, a better quality of attention and personal awareness for them to take with them. Creating an accessible preventive service (this newsletter) for everyone to benefit from, no matter where in the world, is and will continue to be my biggest mission on Earth so far.
On that note, let’s dive in!
Good Cardiovascular Practices & Prevention
Taking good care of your circulatory system means taking good care of your entire self, from the physical to the emotional.
All your habits, including eating, sleeping, physical activity, emotional state, and stress levels make a significant impact in your heart and blood vessels’ health. Your circulatory system is always responding to such habits, and most importantly, to your efforts. Everything you do and think matters!
Whether you have a diagnose of Cardiovascular disease or not, you can always start making positive changes that your body will notice. For example, atherosclerotic damage in arteries might not be reversed, but pivoting to healthier lifestyle choices will protect your arteries and heart from getting further damage.
That’s why when talking about prevention, we must talk about the five essential habits for the human body:
Sleep
Nutrition
Hydration
Movement
Emotions
As healthcare practitioners, doing a simple questionnaire addressing these five key points, will always give us vital info needed to help a patient. Asking the right questions matters.
I used to work for a large Occupational Medicine company in Spain. We would always ask a small but efficient questionnaire focused on these five habits. The insights we obtained in just a few minutes were always the most revealing, allowing us practitioners to be more helpful—and allowing patients to feel heard, seen, and understood. I personally love the surprised and grateful look in their faces every single time.
This professional experience helped me expand my views on preventive work and all the ways in which prevention should always be the very first step in healthcare. If systems are saturated, then we must be able to do something else to make sure people receive health prevention education.
Let’s Analyse These 5 Key Habits of Human Health
1. Sleep
During sleep, the body regenerates, cleanses and detox itself. When you don’t sleep enough hours in one night, your body can’t regenerate properly, cleanse or detox itself from the day’s work. The lack of quality sleep will result in a tired, exhausted and worn system, a.k.a an exhausted, moody YOU.
Of all healthy habits, sleep is the most essential one of all. A person could go without food for several days and still manage to function somehow, but go without sleep two nights in a row…and your entire system will collapse. Just ask hospital staff or anyone who works night shifts at any job. The body needs proper sleep to recover and function, and it depends on the light/darkness cycles in nature to perform all its functions—this is called the circadian rhythm.👇🏼
The sleep cycle works in connection with the circadian rhythm—a biologic cycle based on the light/darkness received through light sensors in your eyes that sends info to your brain. When the sun goes down, your brain gets a signal through these sensors to start prepping you for night time and regenerative work during sleep. The problem comes when we don’t let nature do its thing. We go on screens, late at night, knocking ourselves with sensory stimuli, medications, or worse, alcohol and drugs. The brain continues to be stimulated, unable to start the sleep and all regeneration processes.
(In my Feel Good Sleep Guide, I explain more in detail about the sleep process.)
When bad sleep habits are made chronic, the body eventually enters a maladaptive mode where stress hormones and inflammatory factors are released into your bloodstream more regularly to keep you going. As you now know from our previous chapter, chronic cortisol and other hormones will cause inflammation in the body, affecting not just the circulatory system but all other systems.
I always tell my patients that the brain is like a toddler: it’s amazingly smart and sweet, protective of us, and it requires steady routines and healthy limits to function normally. In the same way, just like a toddler, if our brain isn’t fed the right nutrients and habits, it will throw tantrums, making us feel clouded, unfocused, confused, or overwhelmed.
A while back, my partner
wrote an exceptional piece called ‘This Is Your Body On No Sleep’. Even though he’s not a doctor, he conveyed the most reliable (and scary!) breakdown I’ve seen on lack of sleep. I highly recommend reading it. To give you some perspective, he explains:‘A third of your life (around 230,000 hours) will be spent unconscious. It sounds ridiculous, even wasteful – yet if you don’t ensure you’re spending around 7 to 9 hours a day in the mysterious state of radically altered consciousness we call “sleep”, you’ll quickly fall apart in ways that are nerve-wracking to contemplate.’
In essence, good rest is key to our survival and healthy functioning.
2. Nutrition
Have you heard the saying “you are what you eat"? Or “let food be thy medicine”? A good, healthy diet is synonym of cardiovascular health and overall health.
Like we mentioned when talking about cholesterol and atherosclerosis, what we eat has a direct impact in our arteries. Foods high in saturated and trans fats will likely increase your cholesterol in the bloodstream, making it prone to form fat buildups in your arteries’ walls, hardening and narrowing them. As you might recall, this is the #1 risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Not to mention all the unhealthy fats that can accumulate in other parts of your body: the liver, around muscles, abdominal tissues, or the heart, affecting the way they can perform in the long run.
That’s why there is a lot of talk about good nutrition—different from diets! Restrictive diets that focus solely on loosing weight, will tend to be risky and not so good for your health…Beware. I always encourage my patients and readers to OBSERVE their bodies first, especially when wanting to change some habits. Observation is key, my friends. You must first become aware of what your body is feeling when eating your usual foods. Maybe you’re so used to feeling a certain way, but have never questioned a bloatedness after eating a big pile of vegetables or legumes—which is great, but they will naturally make you bloated and gassy. Have you noticed?
Simply observing your body will give you an awareness to get started.
Here’s an idea: use a little notepad or journal to write down your bodily sensations for a week or two. I call this The Feel Good Journal, which I created many years back to give to patients so they could print it and use it to keep track in this observation process. After a couple of weeks, they would be amazed at their own findings about their body. Maybe they needed to make a simple change like shifting to lactose-free milk, or cutting down on sugars and cakes a little bit every week, or maybe they realised they weren’t eating fruit at all. See my point?
Here’s a downloadable copy of the Feel Good Health Journal. Get a notepad and start observing and taking your own notes.
Remember: you are what you eat. With a better diet that fits YOUR needs according to your activities and your schedules, you’ll notice an improvement in focus, clarity, emotional balance, strength, reduced cravings and reduced mood swings. Sounds insane, right? Well, have a go at observing your diet for 1-2 weeks only and realise for yourself. 😉
3. Hydration
Drinking water is the other most vital habit for proper health.
Think about this: when you’re admitted in hospital for any health problem, what is the first thing that doctors and nurses always do? Put some fluids into your veins, right? This is usually simply hydration fluids. Why? Because correct hydration in your body is what ensures the proper functioning of every single cell! Have you ever ran a few kilometres or done 1 hour workout without drinking water? You feel almost instantly dry and suffocating. The body needs water. Period.
A dehydrated system can give you endless symptoms, such as headaches, constipation, lowered immune defenses translating into more regular flus, burning sensation when peeing, urinary infections, itchy or sandy sensation in the eyes, itchy skin, acidity in the stomach, reflux sensations, creaky joints. Water is everywhere in the body! It’s no joke when we say that the human body is at least 60% water.
A good hydration state will keep your blood levels stable and a steady kidney function, which in consequence will maintain a balanced stress-hormone levels in your entire body. Less cortisol and adrenaline peaks will contribute to a balanced blood pressure, which directly protects your kidneys, blood vessels and heart. See how it all connects?
In this video,
gives a really clear explanation on hydration in the body (while also debunking the 8-water-glass-myth). Have a look:To learn more about proper hydration, I have created two water guides for you:
4. Movement
Movement is life. Since the moment we’re being formed in our mother’s womb there is movement. Without movement, the human body can suffer all sorts of imbalances very quickly.
Have you ever felt back pain after a really long night sleep? Imagine being bound to bed several days in a row? The human body is made for moving. Through movement, many systems in the body can balance chemical processes within the cells, the organs, and the blood. Thanks to movement, the muscles get activated. This simple contraction action helps release growth hormones, process calcium for bone’s health, and regulate blood sugar levels. Movement also keeps your joints well lubricated and your tendons stretched, allowing you to be fully independent and functional as long as possible.
More importantly, when you move and all these biological processes get activated, you are helping reduce inflammation in the circulatory system. Muscle movement generates an increase in HDL (the good cholesterol) in the bloodstream. This HDL helps clean LDL (the bad cholesterol) from blood vessels, reducing risk of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Exercise of any kind, as little as it can be, will protect your cardiovascular system. Fact.
Whether you practice regular exercise or are just getting started, I can promise you that your body will thank you. And quickly enough you’ll notice its full list of benefits. If you’re only getting started, here’s another guide I have also created on how to exercise when you don’t have time to exercise. (The Feel Good Life has got you covered, my friends! 😉)
5. Emotions
What you think and feel impacts your physical body. Fact.
Medical News magazine explains:
It’s common to shell up our deepest and most difficult emotions, thinking that we’re alone in all our worries. But the truth is that we all worry about pretty much the same things, one way or another: family issues, relationship problems, money worries, debt, work overload, sense of personal guilt or shame.
Every time we worry, hormones and neurotransmitters in the body are released into the bloodstream. They impact your brain’s amygdala (emotional control tower of the body), triggering physical reactions in the rest of your body. Getting diarrhoea when nervous, stomach butterflies when in love, neck or jaw pain when awaiting an important meeting, vertigo or ear ringing when feeling highly stressed out. Do any of these sound familiar? I bet they do.
In the cardiovascular system, pent-up emotions translate into high levels of stress hormones (again), combined with other biochemical stress factors that will impact your anxiety, your eating, the quality of foods your body craves when it’s under stress, just to mention a few. Ever wonder why you crave fries, a hamburger, or a tasty, fat chocolate before an exam, a job interview, or even during your period? Because of hormonal imbalances related to your fluctuating emotions.
It’s only natural to feel all this range of emotions, both in men and women, and so is going through phases. What’s not natural is to remain living in a chronic state of worry, fear, guilt or shame. It’s truly detrimental to your health, affecting your blood pressure, blood vessel and kidney health, and even your digestive health.
Fun fact: did you know that serotonin (the happy hormone) is produced not just in the brain but also in the gut? In fact, only 10% comes from the brain! The other 90% comes from your intestines. This means that a chronically inflamed intestine will impact your emotions very strongly.
Thankfully, there are many resources available nowadays to help you in times of emotional distress. Maybe reaching out for a friend, family member, a local community, a charity service, faith-based communities. We all deserve support, and it begins with us being open to accepting it and receiving it.
10 Good Practices Towards Cardiovascular Health
After having explained the five main habits that can impact your circulatory system, let me give you my best ideas to help you take action and start improving your cardiovascular health. Whether you have a cardiovascular disease or not, this is a safe, easy guide for everyone. Under any doubts, please always consult with your doctor.
Let’s go!
1. Practice Physical Activity
As a general goal, it is recommended to aim for 30 minutes of physical activity per day, at least 5 days a week. It might sound like a lot, I know. But if you think of all the walking up and down you might do in a day, you will realise that you’re walking at least 20 minutes on daily basis.
Everything counts: if you can take the stairs instead of the electric ones or the lift; if you can go by bike, or choose to leave the bus/underground two stops ahead of yours as a way to add some steps, or have a little 15-minute walk after your meals. All these can make a huge impact in your cardiovascular health. Stretching 10 minutes before bedtime can be marvellous too—not just for your joints but for enabling a good night sleep. Try it out!
Inspired to move more and to help my readers move with me, last year I created a thing called Green Prescriptions. (You can read all about it here.) Basically, it’s a medical prescription in which a doctor prescribes you nature and physical activity. Only healthcare practitioners can do this. It’s an amazing movement that I decided to bring to my online community worldwide since last year.
Here’s one Green Prescription for you from last season—to give you a taster, and inspiration to get started. If you enjoy it, we do one monthly prescription. It’s a paid subscriber benefit and includes a private Whatsapp group for sharing and communicating with me and other members.
As an extra source of exercise inspiration, here’s a good adult movement guideline by the CDC (currently still online) to help you get motivated:
2. Reduce sugar, saturated fats, and processed foods consumption
There are many foods known to be inflammatory for the human body. Sugars, saturated fats and all highly processed foods are the most common ones. As they enter the body, the digestive track breaks them down into all sorts of molecules to be used by the body. Some of these molecules are useful, some others can be harmful. When we eat too much of unhealthy foods, all these harmful molecules will fall into the bloodstream, travelling to places, creating damaging reactions in cells and organs and triggering an inflammatory disease.
All this inflammation will impact directly the cardiovascular system. If there’s a fat excess, arteries will suffer from fat buildups, as we have mentioned before. The narrowing and hardening of arteries can provoke high blood pressure in the long run.
In the case of sugars and carbs that break down into sugars, they will be absorbed by the digestive track sending excess sugar into the bloodstream. The pancreas gets the memo and tries to send extra loads of insulin to remove excess sugars from the bloodstream as fast as possible. Eventually, the pancreas can’t keep up with this process, so sugar becomes a regular high in the blood, putting kidneys, blood vessels and other organs to work harder, until they can’t anymore.
This is an overview of how the cycle goes. I hope you can see by now how your diet, your movement and your hydration all work together to keep your circulatory system clean and healthy so that everything else can function properly.
If you struggle with your eating habits, it’s always advised to get professional help, whether privately or through your healthcare service. Most of the times these will offer guidance and other side services (like fitness programs) that you can access to help you get the right support and accountability. There are many local communities as well that offer this support free from cost. Even an organised group of neighbours and friends could be a wonderful solution to help you make nutrition changes.
It takes a good insight and conscious efforts to start eating more healthily. You’ve got this!
3. Reduce salt intake
Salt in the body is essential for cellular functions. However, in excess, salt can easily create a salt/water imbalance that impacts the blood, the kidneys, your blood pressure, and your blood vessels’ health. Salt is tasty, no secret there. But as with everything, try to consume it in moderation by reducing it in your diet. This doesn’t refer to salt table only, but also to most processed foods, canned foods, cold meats, processed meats, and fast food.
Salt (the element also know as Sodium or Na+) can affect your cardiovascular system via different mechanisms. Too much salt can make your hormones go out of whack, it can lower your immune system, alter your intestines microbiome, make you retain fluids, and create oxidative stress—a process in which blood vessels and cells can become highly damaged. All this can lead to organ damage, particularly in the heart, blood vessels, and kidneys; your main cardiovascular-related organs.
The least salt you can take, the better cardiovascular health you will gain.
4. Quit smoking/vaping
Smoking is a major risk for heart disease. When you smoke or vape, the blood flow to your heart and other vital organs is reduced due to the narrowing of arteries that happens because of the chemicals within the smoke. This causes a rise in blood pressure, damaging blood vessel lining, increasing plaque buildup in arteries (atherosclerosis), making blood more likely to clot, and ultimately raising the risk of heart attack, stroke, and peripheral artery disease. As you can see, smoking is one of the most damaging habits to the cardiovascular system.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) explains:
‘When breathed in, the toxic mix of more than 7,000 chemicals1 in cigarette smoke can interfere with the delivery of oxygen-rich blood to your heart and the rest of your body.
When you breathe in cigarette smoke, the blood that is distributed to the rest of the body becomes contaminated with the smoke’s chemicals. These chemicals can damage your heart and blood vessels,1 which can lead to cardiovascular disease.”
In the resources section at the end of this post, you’ll find a list of tools and links to help you (or someone you love) quit smoking.
5. Quit or reduce alcohol drinking
When you drink, alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream, reaching all organs and depressing the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord), which controls virtually all body functions.
Alcohol also increases stress hormones like cortisol, targeting arteries and elevating your blood pressure. It can also increase cholesterol—this happens because the body breaks down alcohol into cholesterol and triglycerides, increasing levels of LDL (bad cholesterol). In excess, this fatty particles can accumulate in the liver, affecting its functioning and increasing risk of clots in your body.
John Hopkins Medicine and the National Library of Medicine advise:
‘Although light-to-moderate drinking can protect against coronary artery disease, heavy alcohol consumption can damage the cardiovascular system, resulting in maladies such as heart muscle disorders, irregular heart rhythms, high blood pressure, and strokes.
What’s more, alcohol can contribute to obesity and the long list of health problems that can go along with it. Alcohol is a source of excess calories and a cause of weight gain that can be harmful in the long term.’
In the resources section at the end of this post, you’ll find a list of tools and links to help you (or someone you love) quit drinking.
6. Sit less. Stretch more.
Since pandemic and Work-From-Home practices, many people have reported gaining quality of life over a calmer routine at home. However, they have also reported decreased movement due to long hours of sitting, and bad postures due to lacking the right (ergonomic) equipment. This has mostly taken a toll on the joints, the spine, the sight, and overall metabolism, impacting directly the cardiovascular system once again.
When working from home or in office setups, where you must sit for long hours, self-awareness and discipline play a vital role in preventing the most common occupational ailments we see in consultation every day: strained sight, lower back problems, neck and shoulder issues, sciatica, and more. It continues to be a learning curve for many, but there are thankfully lots of tools and guidelines to help you take active pauses while at work to help you prevent.
I made this 1-minute video with 5 easy movements to help decompress your body any time, whether at home or at work. It’s my most popular post to date! Give it a go and see for yourself.
7. Sleep at least between 7 to 9 hours per night
I’m an avid sleeper and have always been. There’s no special formula, but I have certainly observed and tried different things throughout the years to help me improve my sleep, particularly in times of stress. For this reason, I always love offering my own ideas to improve everyone’s sleep.
So here’s a good list of practical tips that you can practice in the comfort of your own home. This applies both to kids and adults. In fact, all those good sleep routines you apply to your kids, nephews or grandkids…apply them to yourself!
Get ready to fall into Morpheus’ arms:
Play white noise, pink noise, or rain/thunder noise from Youtube or Spotify at bedtime.
Baby sleep playlists are effective too. I like using Spotify because it has sleep timer.
Stop using screens 1 hour before bedtime. A screen’s blue light activates the brain cell activity. To prepare for bed, you want the opposite. If possible, use a blue light filter on such screens and on your glasses.
Stop consuming fluids 1 hour before bedtime to avoid walking up to pee, disrupting your sleep.
Prepare your room for sleep: apply scents, regulate room temperature, let some air flow, keep it organised, make it cosy, lovely and welcoming. A cosy, fresh, clean bedroom is the perfect mix for a restful night, believe or not.
Vanilla/chocolate/lavender scents are relaxing—try to choose essential oils and products that does not contain irritating substances for the lungs overnight.
In cold weather, vaporisers help your airways stay humid overnight, especially if there’s central heating systems. These dehydrate you a LOT.
Avoid caffeine or stimulants after 3pm in the afternoon.
If needed, keep a glass or bottle of water on your night table to hydrate occasionally if you wake up overnight.
8. Talk about your emotions
As I mentioned, expressing our emotions is a vital exercise that we all need regardless. It’s always recommended to find healthy ways and trusted people with whom you can communicate. Whether it’s your best friend, a therapist, a trusted colleague at work, or a local community, try to find an outlet for your emotions. We all need (and deserve) to feel heard and understood.
I always advise my patients to practice journaling. Even the act of writing your emotions in a private and reliable way is great for expressing what you feel in a safe way. If you need more of an accountability support, how about finding a community where self-care rituals are encouraged? Look for like-minded people through local group activities, like weekend walks, sound therapy groups, a book club, or playing an instrument. Anything creative, physical or psychological will highly enhance your mental wellbeing and with it, your physical health. And community will always be key.
9. If you have personal or family Cardiovascular Disease history
…please make sure you consult with your doctor to rule out anything important, and keep regular checkups. Your future self will thank you.
10. And if you take medications
…make sure you take them accordingly, and do regular medical followups to keep your circulatory system in check, just like you would to your car every year. Consider your regular medical checkups like a car circulation permit but for humans!
Cardiovascular Health Resources
Here’s a comprehensive list of tools and resources to help you (or a beloved one) improve your lifestyle habits to enhance your health and prevent disease.
Specialists on Heart and Cardiovascular Health
These are physicians who work specifically on the cardiovascular field, while also writing and educating people on all things cardiovascular health.
Dr. Paddy Barret | Preventive Cardiologist & Writer
Dr.
| Writer of Cardiology Made EasyDr.
| NYU CardiologistDr.
| Cardiothoracic Surgeon
Other Healthcare Professionals Talking Prevention & Integrative Health
Healthcare professionals talking about health from an integrative and preventative perspective.
Associations & Organisations
These all offer practical information and resources on cardiovascular health.
Booklets & Guides by the British Heart Foundation
Resources on Sleep
Resources to Help You Quit Smoking or Vaping
Resources to Help You Quit Drinking
Resources to Stay Active
Parkrun (I’ve personally tried this in the UK and it’s amazing!)
Google fit (fitness tracker on your phone, includes cardio-points which are great for weekly heart-health guidance)
Use a smart watch
Find walking groups (or create your own!)
Medically-guided Stress Management Resources:
Don’t Stress It! The Free Course
Don’t Stress It! The e-Book (For Paid Subscribers)
That’s A Wrap!
As you might have realised by now, the circulatory system is not only vast but extremely fascinating and essential to our survival and wellbeing. Everything works in your body thanks to the blood flow and your pumping heart, nurturing every single cell of your body. So much that we’ve covered in this 3-part chapter!
In case you’ve missed it, here you can access the entire Circulatory System series:
Part 1 - How It Looks Like & How It Works
Part 2 - What Happens When The Circulatory System Gets Sick
Part 3 - How To Take Good Care & Prevent Cardiovascular Disease (This one you just read)
Enjoy this learning calmly. Remember, the purpose of this series called 'Basics Matter’ is to show you in simple terms how the human body works, so that you can take better care of it, improve your health, and prevent for the future.
Your health is my goal. ❤️
Until next time!
Much love,
Dr. Mariana
*** Short Announcement ***
In the remaining 3 weeks of March, I want to give you a break so you can focus on reading and digesting all this new knowledge. Circulatory system has been a biggie!
I will also use a short pause to enjoy family time as we attend my sister’s wedding, and as I celebrate my birthday on March 13th - yay! It’s all going to be exciting and I want to be really present through it all.
Next time, we will dive into the Respiratory System, which works hand in hand with the circulatory system—it’ll be an amazing ride. We will resume with the Respiratory System as soon as April begins. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, stay cosy and enjoy your Feel Good reading!
Love,
Dr. Mariana
Excellent!