Let the light illuminate your heart! Let the light into your heart!
Our heart is the symbol of our emotions and physiologically, of course, it has a central role in our bodies. Together with the blood vessels, they supply all the body's cells with nutrition and oxygen, while at the same time, decomposition products and other unwanted substances are transported away. Therefore, it is of course of the utmost importance to keep blood vessels and heart in the best shape. There is much you can do through lifestyle choices to optimize your cardiovascular health. Much of it you are probably already familiar with, but a newcomer to the health arena is light therapy with red and near-infrared (NIR) light.
Important health parameters
There are many markers that are important to monitor for heart health. Blood pressure, which is measured with a blood pressure cuff, and cholesterol levels, which are measured with blood samples, are two such. These can be of great importance to our cardiovascular health over time. Lifestyle, genes and indeed also where you live on earth can in turn influence these values. Apart from genes, there is a lot you can do with lifestyle and it doesn't actually have to be particularly difficult either. Read on and you will get some simple tips that are easy to put into practice.
Lifestyle for the heart is usually about the right amount of exercise, minimizing stress and getting enough sleep. With the diet, you can also do great things for your heart. Contrary to what many may think, there are actually effective diet strategies that don't actually require much to implement. Because it is important that the changes you undertake to make become permanent and then it is important that they do not become completely unreasonable in the long run. They should even contribute to your enjoyment and quality of life so you win on all levels.
Food for the heart
Foods such as fresh garlic and foods containing sterols can have a positive effect on cholesterol levels. Garlic is excellent in dressings and stir-fries. Sterols are found in foods such as cabbage, brown rice, buckwheat and pistachios. This does not mean that you need to live on buckwheat porridge and broccoli, but it is of course good to include these foods in your diet. If it seems unreasonable to keep it for a long time, you can make it easier than that: if you make rice at home - choose raw rice! If you want to cozy up with chips - replace them with pistachios!
Fiber is also positive for these values and the most effective fibers are the soft, soluble ones.
These fibers are what we find in chia, psyllium and flax seeds. Oats, many fruits and cereals also contain some of this product. The soluble fibers can be recognized by the fact that they form a gel in water, which some describe as giving a "slimy" consistency. A good and useful way to get these is through chia pudding, in which pleasure and benefit are combined!
Blood pressure is also affected by diet. There are ways that too low an intake of minerals such as calcium, potassium and magnesium can drive up blood pressure. The solution is to eat more vegetables and fruit, preferably in fresh form. Celery, fresh garlic and adequate amount of omega-3 can also be positive for the same. Adequate intake of vitamin D is also an interesting factor for blood pressure.
Light for the heart
It has long been known that there are geographical differences when it comes to risk factors such as blood pressure and cholesterol values. The closer to the equator you live, the lower the risk of poor values and disease. The closer you get to the equator, the more light people are exposed to on average, and daylight correlates with vitamin D levels in the blood. However, modern research has shown that vitamin D is not behind this effect, but rather the light itself. Vitamin D is probably primarily a marker for exposure to a lot of sunlight, and therefore it is easy to misunderstand the connections. In addition, it has been seen that there is a connection to sunlight, not only between cholesterol and blood pressure, but also with the risk of premature death due to heart disease. That is why light has become so interesting.
In our cells there are systems that are activated by light. When these are activated, it leads to a series of positive effects on our bodies. Many anti-inflammatory and healing processes are activated, and therefore it is good to expose yourself to a certain amount of light, preferably daily. One problem with the light from the sun is that it is not undividedly positive. Too much light can damage our cells and increase the risk of, among other things, skin cancer, although it seems that the sun reduces the mortality rate of said disease. In addition, UV light does not penetrate very deeply into our bodies, which means that it cannot provide so much effect in depth.
Red and infrared light is the best!
Some wavelengths penetrate deeper than others and here red visible light and infrared light have the best penetrating effects. Red light reaches a few centimeters into the body, while near-infrared light can reach as far as 15 cm into soft tissues. In addition, there is so little energy in this light that the body's cells are not damaged. This means that you avoid the negative effects of solar radiation while maximizing the positive effects.
The best way to experience the good effects of this light is through so-called RLT, which stands for Red Light Therapy. RLT is available in several versions, ranging from hand-held lamps for the treatment of specific areas to lamps that irradiate a larger part of the body. Much research shows that treatment with RLT has positive effects on both blood pressure and cholesterol, but also on actual cardiovascular health. It also seems to protect against arrhythmias and heart fibrillation. It probably takes 0-15 minutes per day with a sufficiently powerful panel for the fine effects to be optimized and it is also becoming more and more popular to use this side-effect-free and effective therapy. The effect is primarily determined by how much of the body is exposed (the bigger the better), how long you take the treatment and what power the lamps have (about 1500 watts is a good yardstick).
References:
Low-Level Laser Irradiation Precondition for Cardiac Regenerative Therapy – PubMed (nih.gov)
Author: Martin Brunnberg
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