World Heart Day tips that make a real impact on employee health

Every body deserves good heart health, but sometimes it’s not as easy as grabbing the closest bowl of Cheerios (though delicious). World Heart Day is September 29^th, and though Limeade is putting a special lens on heart health this September, the truth is, good heart health should be in focus all year-round.  

To start, how much do you know about your own heart health? Check out American Heart Association’s My Life Check and find out your heart score.

Why is this important? The cardiovascular disease (CVD) situation in the United States is dire. Let this sink in: In 2019, heart disease was the #1 cause of death in the United States. The US listed CVD as the cause of 874,613 deaths — approximately every 40 seconds, someone in the United States will have a heart attack.  

What can you do to get ahead of this trend? Taking proactive steps such as being physically active, practicing good nutrition, and not smoking are key factors and behaviors that can decrease heart disease and stroke. Focusing on heart health doesn’t mean you need to train for a marathon or take on other daunting tasks. In fact, there are incredibly simple, dare we say natural, ways to take care of your cardiovascular health.

World Heart Day tips

Limeade and partner Happify put together a few of our favorite World Heart Day tips to care for that hard-working organ: 

1. Do something that makes you happy. People who consider themselves happy are likely to have a lower heart rate and lower concentrations of plasma associated with heart disease. 

2. See the glass as half-full. Personality traits such as optimism are proven to avoid or successfully manage illnesses such as heart attacks, strokes and depression.  Among older people, optimists have a 77% lower risk of heart disease than pessimists. 

3. Keep in touch with others. Heart attack survivors who have more social support have better health outcomes. 

4. Get in the zone and meditate. Mindfulness helps people with medical conditions such as coronary heart disease to feel better.  

Activities for World Heart Day

In addition to these every day mindset tricks, workplace wellness programs around the world are helping employees elevate their health with World Heart Day activities. Limeade is joining the movement by providing fun challenges like:

• Hit the Road to encourage outdoor walking 
• Fill half your plate with vegetables or fruit to up your daily serving
• Connect with a friend to lift your mood 
• Try yoga for beginnings to decrease stress

Workplace heart health success story

How can employers make an impact? Kohler, a Midwest-based manufacturing company, known for its production of plumbing products, cabinetry, tile, engines, generators and hospitality services is on a mission to improve the heart health of their employee population after an internal survey highlighted a good portion of the population had poor nutrition habits. Using Foodsmart, a partner of Limeade, Kohler found resounding results: 

Since the program launched in January 2019, Kohler associates showed significant nutrition improvement as measured by Foodsmart’s proprietary Nutriquiz (a nutrition assessment based on National Institute of Health research). Identified employees focused on their nutrition and saw improvement in areas like healthy fats (averaged an increase of 13.7%). In addition, 51% of obese individuals who lost more than 5% body weight were able to keep it off after 12 months, which is far better than DPP studies (only 35%).

IMPACT:

When looking to improve your own heart health, or the health of your employees, consider taking small steps that make a substantial difference this World Heart Day.  

Additional heart health resources:

• Heart Health Month in review: What we learned
• 7 Challenges to celebrate American Heart month