How to maintain heart health at every age

We are paging Dr. Paul to get his advice on keeping our hearts healthy.

Heart month is nearly behind us, and if you’re wondering how to maintain a healthy heart going forward, to the Medical Officer of Health and CEO of the Eastern Ontario Health Unit has some guidance.

The good news is heart health can be maintained through daily activities. The bad news, according to Dr. Paul Roumeliotis, A.K.A. Dr. Paul, is most people aren’t meeting the recommended exercise guidelines to maintain proper heart health.

Dr. Paul says only 50 per cent of adults and 50 per cent of children under the age of 12 are meeting the heart health recommendations. That number is even lower for those between the ages of 12 and 17.

“The problem is only 20 per cent of teenagers are following these recommendations,” he said.

Dr. Paul joined CTV Your Morning Ottawa on Wednesday to share some tips for maintaining good heart health at all ages.

“The benefits of exercising and getting enough physical activity are so many,” Dr. Paul said.

“The earlier you start embedding those habits in the kid, the better it is.”

Screen time

According to Dr. Paul, one of the main reasons people are failing to meet exercise requirements is screen time. This, even applies for infants.

“What is the number one distraction for kids? Screen time,” he said.

Dr. Paul says children under two years old should have no screen time. For children between two and four, a maximum of one hour of screen time per day is recommended.

For anyone older than four years old, Dr. Paul says the maximum should be two hours of screen time per day.

“Limit the screen time, limit sedentary time — and even adults for that matter,” he said. “Being sedentary for more than seven to eight hours a day, is actually very bad for the heart, very bad for the brain.”

Recommendations for children

Dr. Paul says parents should ensure children younger than four are active. For babies, this could be as simple as giving them “tummy time.” As infants get older, parents should encourage them to play around on the floor, even if that only means crawling, Dr. Paul said.

“As they get older and more developed, you can put them on the floor, play with them, get the ball, and those types of things, and work it up to as they get older,” he said.

Recommendations for ages 5 to 17

According to Dr. Paul, youths between five and 17 years of age should get one hour of physical activity per day. Most days, the activity can be moderate, however, three days of the week, the exercise it should be vigorous.

Vigorous activity should be intense enough that it becomes difficult to speak at length, he says.

Moderate activities should only get people slightly short of breath, Dr. Paul says.

“You can talk, but you can’t sing,” he said.

For parents with teens, Dr. Paul says it’s especially important to limit screen time and promote activity.

“Really, we want to increase that activity and promote it,” he said. “Start young, and this is the age group — the teenagers are the ones that are not meeting the requirements.”

Recommendations for adults

Adults of all ages should aim for 150 minutes of moderate to high intensity exercise per week, Dr. Paul says.

Rather than try to attack it all at once, Dr. Paul suggests doing small activities that accumulate throughout the week.

“That’s about 20 to 25 minutes a day of vigorous, high intensity to moderate intensity,” he said. “What you can do, is do it in bouts of ten minutes. Get up, ten minutes, have a brisk walk. That type of thing.”

Dr. Paul suggests taking simple steps, like parking the car farther away or taking the stairs rather than the elevator, to get a bit more active throughout the day.

“You add those up, really, it’s not that much,” he said.

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