Interactive | How Do Your Daily Choices Affect Your Heart?

From the minute you wake up to the moment you go to bed, your day is a collection of this-or-that choices you make.

For instance, when you're hungry do you snack on fruits or reach for a packet of chips?

When you're stressed do you smoke?

Water or beer?

Exercise or no exercise?

As you go through your day making these choices, how often do you spare your heart a thought?

Want to know what these do to your heart? Click on the icons in the interactive below to see how each one affects your heart.

Quite a reality check, right?

Here's some more bad news:

We Indian's are more prone to heart conditions than other races.

Speaking to FIT for a different article, Dr Vishal Rastogi, Additional Director, Cardiac Sciences, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute explained this saying,

"Indians have heart attacks 10 years sooner than their western counterparts, they have more diffuse blockages of the arteries and they have very small arteries as compared to the latter."

Dr Vishal Rastogi, Additional Director, Cardiac Sciences, Fortis Escorts Heart Institute

And if that wasn't enough, a worrying number of younger people have been having heart attack in recent years, to the point where it's gone from being an anomaly to an almost-epidemic.

"Now, we are very frequently seeing heart attacks in those who are very, very young. In fact, even in those in their early 20s or 30s," says Dr Rastogi.

According to the Indian Heart Association, around 50 percent of all heart attacks in Indian men occur in those below the age of 50.

In young people, heart conditions go unnoticed for a long time and turn into invisible killers. In them, the first presentation of heart problems is a heart attack, which means they are also at a higher risk of fatality.

Keep Heart Attacks at Bay

Experts agree that although genetics has a significant part to play, your lifestyle choices have a bigger part in determining if you develop heart conditions.

Eating healthy, reducing the intake of sodium, sugar, and fatty foods, moving around and staying active, avoiding stress, and getting regular check ups all go a long way in delaying, if not preventing heart damage.

Designed by: Aman Verma
Developed by: Achintya De