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Heart health is not only important for adults but also for kids as well. You need to take the necessary steps to ensure that you develop habits that boost your kid’s heart health. It is important to note that there are acquired heart diseases that could also affect kids.
These diseases include rheumatic heart disease and Kawasaki disease. With this in mind, you should work on changing your kid’s lifestyle to ensure that they acquire such diseases.
With children, introducing new concepts and ways of life will be hard. You’ll need to take it slow and start with one thing at a time. Here are a few things that will help with kid’s heart health.
Table of Contents
Healthy Snacks
Children are prone to regular snacking throughout the day. However, these snacks are mainly consistent with highly processed foods and junk that is not beneficial to your child.
You should try your best to find alternative snacks that will replace what your child likes to eat most.
If your kid loves sugary snacks, then fruits will be a great substitute for the otherwise unhealthy snacks. Starting this at an early age will instill the right eating habits for your kids. As they grow up they’ll be more inclined to make healthy snack decisions
Healthy Meals
Most children are not big fans of eating a healthy diet especially when they have to do it every day for every meal. However, you should encourage them to embrace healthy meals and make them part and parcel of their daily routine.
The meals should be high in fiber, all the major food groups, and most importantly vegetables and fruits. Reduce the indulgence of salt and saturated fats in your meals. This will help you reduce the risks of heart disease and boost your heart health.
To make this transition easier on your kids, make it a family initiative. Get the whole family to adopt healthy eating habits to ensure that your child is surrounded by people doing what they encourage them to do.
Play and Exercise
Exercising for most children is another chore that they have to do. However, to change this perception, you could include the exercises in their play routine. Get the friend they play with and encourage more movement.
This will be more exciting for your child and help them improve their mental, physical, and heart health. You should encourage your kids to join sports clubs in school to ensure they stay active when they get back to school.
It is also important to understand as a family you’ll need to contribute toward encouraging more movement. You can do this by having family activities and games that you all participate in.
If your child grows up with such influence they’ll be more inclined to keep it up all through their life. This will go a long way to improving their well being and keeping heart diseases away.
Screen Time
Time spent on the tablets and watching tv encourages the adoption of passive activities which later becomes a habit. This means that your child will prefer to live an inactive life which could be harmful to their health and even lead to heart disease.
To avoid this, you need to set ground rules and let them understand how long they are allowed to use their screens. Try to limit it to two or three hours a day and have them engage in other activities during the rest of the day.
These activities could vary from swimming, drawing to even going out for a bike ride. All you need to do is ensure that they are active and have an understanding of when their screen time starts and ends. This will encourage your child to do more and boost their health and wellbeing.
Regular Checkups
Subjecting your child to regular checkups is very important and you should ensure that you keep up with your doctor’s appointments. This is especially important for children suffering from conditions that could result in heart diseases.
For instance, if a child is suffering from high blood pressure, you’ll need to monitor the situation and ensure that it is well maintained. To do this, you have two options to either go for regular checkups or invest in a kid-use blood pressure monitor.
Both options will get the job done however, reserving your doctor’s visits for when you need a consultation is always the best. Learn how to use the blood pressure monitor and take the reading’s of your child’s blood pressure yourself.
Conclusion
Maintaining your kid’s heart health only requires you to introduce a few lifestyle changes. It may be hard for them to cope but they’ll get there. Just keep on pushing and remember the earlier they start this healthy lifestyle the more inclined they’ll be to run with it even when they are older.
