7 Fun Ways to Help Your Heart

Use our expert advice to find your perfect—and perfectly fun—pressure-release valves

Friday, April 17, 2015, 1:26 pm


But sodium isn't the only culprit. Smoking, excessive drinking, inactivity, and bad food choices can also make your arteries burst at the seams. Worse, you may never know what hit you. "Many men don't pay attention to their blood pressure until they're older," says nephrologist George Bakris, M.D., president of the American Society of Hypertension. "But you don't experience symptoms until it's very high."


But there's good news amid the gloom: Keeping your blood pressure out of the danger zone doesn't have to be just about restraint. Use our expert advice to find your perfect—and perfectly fun—pressure-release valves.

Swing By the Candy Store

But you need to eat the right type of chocolate. Darker chocolate contains more antioxidants and less of the sugar that may counteract chocolate's beneficial effects, according to research from Yale. Choose dark chocolate with a minimum of 65 percent cacao, such as Ghirardelli's Intense Dark 72% Cacao Twilight Delight Bar ($4, ghirardelli.com).

Take Her To Bed


Sex can also be a great workout, burning up to 60 calories per half hour in bed. Raise the calorie burn with vigorous sex: Show her menshealth.com/sexpositionmaster, and add more athletic positions to your repertoire.

Crank the Tunes


Fire Up the Game Console


Timothy Church, M.D., chairman of the American Heart Association's physical activity committee, says playing certain Wii activities, such as boxing and jogging, is as good as hitting the gym—as long as you're playing with at least moderate intensity for a minimum of 150 minutes a week. This can lower your systolic blood pressure by 2 to 5 points. "Some of the activities in Wii Fit can qualify as your 30 minutes a day of physical activity," he says. "You'll be sweating buckets."

Toast Your Health
Danish researchers who analyzed data from 75,000 men found that those who had two drinks a day were 31 percent less likely to develop coronary heart disease. That's because alcohol, in modest amounts, makes your arteries larger and more pliable, which in turn lowers your blood pressure. 

But don't have more than two drinks—doing so will raise your blood pressure. Scientists still don't understand why, but Dr. Zusman thinks it could be related to alcohol's adverse effect on other blood-pressure-regulating pathways. Limit your daily intake to two 12-ounce beers, two 5-ounce glasses of wine, or two 1.5-ounce drinks of liquor.

Laugh It Up


Ticker Tracker: Home Edition
Blood-pressure readings taken at home can better predict cardiovascular risk than ones taken at a doctor's office, reports a Finnish study released in April. Blame "white-coat hypertension" and harried office staff, who tend to slap on a cuff quickly and don't wait the recommended 5 to 10 minutes for patients' pressures to stabilize, says Patrick Skerrett, editor of the Harvard Heart Letter. Follow our tips to ensure accuracy.

Check Early
Your blood pressure should drop at night and rise throughout the day. If it doesn't, you may have morning hypertension—a risk factor linked to strokes. So check yours right before you go to bed, and first thing in the morning—but before coffee, which can raise your BP, says Skerrett.

Take Notes
Don't just log your numbers; include the time of day and any activity up to 30 minutes prior to your reading. This can help your doctor explain anomalies, says Skerrett. Look for the American Heart Association's downloadable blood-pressure tracker at heart.org/hbp.

Don't Obsess
"Some doctors avoid recommending home monitoring because people can go crazy," says Skerrett. Stick to twice a day a few times a week. Don't worry about spikes—only trends matter. Try the Omron HEM-780. It will average your last three readings for you.