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Eating salmon can be important for heart health. How? It can help keep your cholesterol lower. Cholesterol is a substance that can build up in your blood vessels, narrowing them and making it difficult for blood to pass through. And when your blood pressure is high, it puts a strain on your heart and on your arteries, which can, over time, become thicker, less flexible, and clogged. A Cardiologist at St. Luke’s Heart and Vascular Center recommends choosing foods like salmon and fresh tuna, high in certain kinds of omega-3 fatty acids. “Foods like these can help prevent a heart attack, because the particular fatty acids they contain can help reduce high cholesterol levels and high blood pressure, two risk factors for heart disease,” says a St. Luke’s Cardiologist.

Getting a good night’s sleep can help lower your blood pressure. Relaxation techniques such as yoga and meditation, which can keep your stress levels down, can also keep your blood pressure low. So whether you want to roll out the yoga mat, or curl up in a comfy corner and take a snooze, your heart can benefit.

While exercise might seem counter-intuitive to preventing a heart attack — it makes your heart beat more quickly, you’re sweating, breathing faster — it makes a lot more sense when you remember that, hey! Your heart is a muscle. Like all of your muscles, it works better and gets stronger when you work it (not overwork it) regularly; a healthy heart can pump the blood around your body more efficiently.

As a St. Luke’s Cardiologist recommends, “When you embrace a nutritious and informed way of eating, get enough rest, and exercise the right amount for your body, you’ve taken three simple steps to take to have, and keep, a healthy heart.”