Every month should be heart health month for 1,000-plus reasons. Then again, healthy lungs are important too, as well as kidneys; even though we have two of them. However, in February you don’t see liver-shaped cards being given out in classrooms, or the Hallmark Channel using a spleen graphic for one of their upcoming Valentine’s Day movies that are totally not drek. So it makes sense that the holiday most associated with the heart would also house the month where we focus on keeping it healthy. 

The easiest aspect of keeping the heart functioning properly is knowing what you’re consuming. One can’t subsist on fast food alone while working a sedentary job, and wonder why their main heart valve has about as much open space as 295 during rush hour; or really most times during the day. Avoiding chain smoking is certainly a good start as well, or smoking of any kind. 

Getting and staying active throughout the week is important too, and that doesn’t have to come in the form of being a gym rat either. For the many reasons people don’t go that route, just taking a walk around the block or at the park can only help. Just the same, treadmills or recumbent bikes can do great things, too. Essentially, anything that keeps you moving, even if you’re wheelhouse is small in that regard, could do great things. 

Thankfully, it’s not hard to research and learn what keeps things optimal related to the physical components of heart health. Just as important though are the things outside of the physical world we can do to keep our hearts healthy. Stress is tops on this list and not adding more of it to our lives because of the outside world, but less, much less. 

This can start by pretty much skipping all of cable news, no matter what your politics are. Sure, if you’re one of the rare few that find a long day at work disappears when you see two yapping heads agreeing with each other vigorously; or shouting over each other so their next sage word can be heard, that’s awesome. If a violent FBI procedural or preachy medical drama helps you unwind, that’s the better energy to engage for sure. 

But it’s almost too easy for that to be the case though. These days it’s not sex that sells so much as negativity, and it takes more effort to shoot fish in a barrel than it does to find something that is at a lower vibe. And when there’s a constant drumbeat of one energy over the other, and it’s a heavy negative one to begin with, it will be difficult for it to not take a toll on one’s mental health and energy, let alone physical. 

Think of it like this: You’ve probably heard the saying about the kind of gasoline you use for your car. If all people fill their lives with anxiety-ridden energy, whether absorbed through media news, sports or anything else, that’s going to be the predominant fuel moving a person from day to day. 

From there, the slope only gets steeper as things may spiral into depression, sleep issues and a litany of other associated negatives. And there is no age or demographic that is spared from this, no matter how stereotypically healthy one may be and or appear to be.  

Thankfully, there isn’t an overly complicated way to deal with this. Personally, I don’t engage any of that type of media, and the only time I see it as the gym with their baker’s dozen-amount of TVs all tuned to various examples of awful in their cardio section. And because that is what it is, I tune all of that out and focus on something that is positive and uplifting. Or just the same, even if I can’t be at a higher vibe all the time, not engaging the lower one is sometimes enough to keep things running optimally for mind and body. 

In the end, as much as heart health is a physical exercise in keeping it pumping and running smoothly, there’s also the energetic component that plays an important role, too. Being out of breath because your team didn’t cover the spread and you put your company’s payroll on the under versus playing in your backyard with your family all 1950s like, may have the same physiological affect, but a far different energetic one on your heart. Choose the latter, your heart will thank you, and probably your kneecaps, too. 

Matt Preston is a creative and professional writer from Gloucester Township in South Jersey. Writing is one of his passions, body, mind and soul wellness one of his goals and belief in destiny his continual motivation. His website and podcast can be found @TheApatheticVegan.com.