There are a lot of facets to heart health, and as pretty much all of us are cooks, we probably know most of the cooking stuff...
(One little tweak, here, one of my reasons for the fresh garlic in everything is that garlic has some mysterious element within it that apparently lowers blood pressure, but you need to eat garlic just about daily...I'm making a good effort in that direction!)
Aside from that, doing three instances of exercise where you raise the heart rate (c'mon! like seriously raise it!) for a 30 minute period three times a week will likely get you well advanced on heart health...
A codicil here, if you're a smoker, you have to do that each day, every day...
(Audeo could fill in a bit more here, I think, she knows a bit more than she lets on...)
Elf, it should also be publicised that "Women are from Venus, Men from Mars" in physiology, and the symptoms of "heart unhealth" that at publicised are almost all "male" symptoms...females have very different ones, and I'm sorry that if I recall correctly, yours are classic...
A "heart preventative" thing, that your Doctor will probably tell you (and if he does not, or disagrees, GET A SECOND OPINION!!!)(This is your "butt" we are talking about-there is no "second issue"!) is that if you are at risk, eating one Bayer "Baby Aspirin" a day will act as a blood thinner, and probably help a lot...and note I am absolutely being "brand specific" here, I do mean "Bayer" "Baby Aspirin"! The enteric versions do not work nearly as well, as regardless of what the pharmacists says, it is still available, so even if you have to spend an extra hour looking around for it, consider how many more years you might be robbed of by being lazy on this point!
A few more points...
If you "suspect" that someone has endured a heart attack, one of the biggest favours you can do is to IMMEDIATELY give him/her an aspirin (this is NOT First Aid-this is curative!) An aspirin ingested within minutes has some fantastic number of people that have survived, versus those that have perished...and the percentages of surviving are on an upslope with how fast they got the Aspirin...and yeah, I think "Extra Strength" would be better, but at the moment, I guess I wouldn't be that fussy!
If you are alone and believe you are suffering a "heart irregularity" or heart attack, obviously, there's nobody there to give you CPR, let alone have defibrillaters...and you might have only 10-20 seconds where you cannt get your breath back and commence to "black out"...(and you might be at the wheel, on a freeway, where you are going to start to kill other people, too!)
Should this happen, IMMEDIATELY commence harsh, deep coughing, likened to producing sputum from the lungs, on a roughly 2 second interval, until you can drive yourself to a hospital (given you are at the wheel) or call 911, or obtain competent assistance, or until the symptom has FULLY receded...(this is similar to "massaging the heart" as CPR does, and causes you to gasp in overdoses of air/oxygen,,,) just what you need!
This is a unique and recognized form of "self CPR"...and literally hundreds, if not thousands of people, each year, could still be with us had they known this...
Please use this advice, AFTER you have validated it with a medical professional, who has your "trust" (noting I AM NOT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL!) and subsequently pass it on to al those you know and love, in order that we can start beating this d****d disease, with knowledge that is available, just not widely distributed...
And shake the change out of your pockets, or come to a committment that for every friend or relative you have lost to the two monsters of Cancer and Heart Disease, you will contribute a miserly $50 each year, on the annual appeal...would you not give $50 to get your relative or friend "back", if even only for 15 minutes?
Think about it...
Lifter