As a consumer, you probably see “heart-healthy” labels on food items all the time. But do you really know what heart health means and why it’s important?
Experts from Tufts University in Boston offer some details on how your heart works and how you can safeguard your heart’s health.
“It’s not as if you turn 65 or 70 and everything falls apart,” says Alice Lichtenstein, director of the cardiovascular nutrition team at Tufts’ Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging.
“If your aim is to keep your vasculature healthy, you have to start early and be a good role model for your offspring,” she said in a school news release.
RELATED: What Every Black Woman Should Know About Heart Disease
The aging heart
The heart does a lot of important work, pumping blood through arteries and veins to carry oxygen and nutrients throughout the body.
With age, blood vessels can stiffen and blockages can build up. The whole system may become more prone to inflammation, increasing the risk of heart attacks, heart failure and other cardiac dysfunction.
Lifestyle can’t control all of this. Some of it is the result of genetics and your environment.
While men have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease than women when they’re young, women’s risk rises sharply after menopause, according to Tufts.
The blood vessels expand and contract based on the body’s needs. But they also become less flexible over time, making it harder to get blood where needed. This can cause blood pressure to rise and create faster pressure waves. That places extra stress on the heart and increases the likelihood of heart failure or other cardiac diseases.
The female hormone estrogen appears to be protective, says Jennifer DuPont, a principal investigator at the Molecular Cardiology Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center.
“Women have lower arterial stiffness when they’re young,” DuPont said in the release. “And then they hit menopause and