It's time to have another look at your daily routines to give your heart a peppy springtime upgrade. Live a heart-healthy lifestyle by making some changes to your everyday life. Never ever compromise your heart's health guard it closely.

Living heart-healthy requires sensible lifestyle behaviours and best health practices. That's why you should be mindful of the mischief-makers that negatively impact your heart.

The culprits include unhealthy eating, poor physical activity, chronic stress and tobacco smoking. You can take 'smart steps' to protect your heart from these harmful offenders.

Smart steps necessitate increasing your good cholesterol, maintaining a healthy weight, reducing stress and kicking the smoking habit. To create a heart-healthy environment, you'll need to adopt in unison the following four lifestyle adjustments.

1. Unhealthy Eating: Unhealthy food choices and poor eating behaviours are serious malefactors that affect heart health. Steer clear of saturated fats, Trans-fats and dietary cholesterol they are unhealthy fats. Enjoy a healthy diet that's varied as it will provide the needed beneficial good fats and essential nutrients.

Foods like salmon, nuts, olive oil, legumes, lean meats and low-fat dairy are all good eats. Also, fruits and vegetables are packed with essential vitamins, nutrients, high in fibre and antioxidants. Beta-carotene and vitamin C all help to lower cholesterol.

It's prudent to cut out processed foods and foods high in sugars and salt. These foods can contribute to, unhealthy cholesterol levels and chronic bodily inflammation that takes a toll on the heart. Healthy eating is critical to increasing good cholesterol and sustaining a healthy weight.

2. Poor Physical Activity: Poor physical activity adversely affects your heart, it's important to be active and maintain a non-sedentary lifestyle. Regular moderate physical activity is indispensable to help maintain a healthy weight.

Extra pounds do not contribute to heart-healthy living and besides weight gain is also associated with conditions like diabetes, high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure. Such conditions are all  negative factors for good heart health

Moreover, high blood pressure is one of the most hazardous risk factors for heart disease. But exercise has many benefits, it helps to lower blood pressure and control blood sugar levels. Simply by getting more exercise and aiming for a healthy weight you can remarkably improve your heart's health

3. Chronic Stress: Chronic stress is damaging to a strong heart so it's essential to manage stress to minimize its deleterious effects. Chronic stress doesn't just affect your blood pressure it also contributes to inflammation which attacks your immune system.

You can employ better ways to cope with and manage stress. Try a stress management plan that includes exercise and relaxation techniques. Make sure you're taking vacations periods or releasing pent-up emotions with a good cry or a good laugh to alleviate harmful stress

4. Smoking: Smoking is not just bad for your lungs its a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. A smoking habit raises bad cholesterol levels and damages the lining of your arteries, it causes a build-up of fatty material which narrows your arteries. 

The carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke reduces the amount of oxygen in your blood.

Chronic smoking can cause angina, a heart attack or even a stroke. Quitting and staying away from smoking or tobacco is beneficial it's a choice that's critical for heart-healthy living.

Take stock and don't let your heart status be compromised, protect your heart from harmful offenders.