The World Heart Federation created World Heart Day and it was first celebrated on Sept. 24, 2000. The day is observed worldwide on the last Sunday of September every year. The theme for this year’s World Heart Day was “workplace wellness.” As most of us spend over half our waking hours working, the workplace was considered ideal to promote heart-healthy messages and raise awareness about the risk factors for heart disease and stroke. A heart-healthy workplace encourages a healthy diet, physical activity and a smoke-free environment.

The schedule of activities across the Kingdom was designed to educate people to the effects of cardiovascular disease — conditions that are the No. 1 cause of death. “It’s this disease that claims more lives than any other across the globe,” said Tarek Rabah, president, AstraZeneca Gulf, one of the major organizations behind the campaign. “Thirty percent of deaths worldwide can be attributed to cardiac disease of one form or another and the Gulf contributes significantly to the global statistics because of its high incident of diabetes, obesity and cholesterol,” he says.

Free health screenings were being made available to adults, including Body Mass Index measurements, blood pressure recordings blood sugar checks and a ‘smokalyser’ breath test, which became popular for those who wanted to quit their harmful tobacco habit, as the handy device can read the amount of poisonous carbon monoxide in a smoker’s body.

A team of Saudi-based cardiologists and specialists has echoed some of the tips. Dr. Devi Shetty of Narayan Hrudayalaya in the southern Indian city of Bangalore forwarded online tips for leading a happy and healthy living by taking care of the heart.

The thumb rules for a layman to take care of his heart are Diet — less of carbohydrate, more of protein, less oil; Exercise — half an hour’s walk, at least five days a week; avoid lifts and avoid sitting for a long time, quit smoking, control weight, control blood pressure (BP) and sugar.

When an apparently healthy person gets a cardiac arrest, it is called silent attack. That is why everyone past the age of 30 should undergo routine health checkups. Heart diseases can be hereditary.

Change your attitude toward life. Do not look for perfection in everything in life. This is one of the practices to de-stress.

Walking is better than jogging since the latter leads to early fatigue and injury to joints. It is extremely rare for people with low blood BP to suffer heart diseases. Cholesterol accumulates from childhood and it is not something to be overly concerned in adulthood.

Irregular eating habits can affect the heart. You tend to eat junk food when the habits are irregular and your body’s enzyme release for digestion gets confused. You can control cholesterol content without using medicines by controlling diet, taking a regular walk and eating walnut. Yoga helps prevention of heart ailments.

Fruit and vegetables are the best and the worst is oil, whether groundnut, sunflower, olive or any other.

You should go through routine blood test to ensure sugar, cholesterol. Check blood pressure and do a treadmill test after an ECG.

First aid steps on getting a heart attack: Help the person into a sleeping position, place an aspirin tablet under the tongue with a sorbitrate tablet, if available, and rush him to a coronary care unit since the maximum casualty takes place within the first hour. It is very difficult to differentiate between pain caused by a heart attack and that caused due to gastric trouble without ECG.

The steep increase in heart problems among youngsters is due to sedentary lifestyles, smoking, junk food and lack of exercise, especially in countries where people are genetically three times more vulnerable to heart attacks than Europeans and Americans.

It is possible for a person to have BP outside the normal range of 120/80 and yet be perfectly healthy. Marriages within close relatives can lead to heart problems. In fact, co-sanguinity leads to congenital abnormalities.

When you are young, nature protects you from an irregular daily routine. However, as you grow older respect the biological clock.

Most medicines have some side effects, however modern anti-hypertensive treatments are extremely safe. Consuming more coffee or tea need not necessary lead to heart attacks. Nor asthma patients are more prone to heart disease.

Every race is vulnerable to some disease and unfortunately people in certain countries tend to fall victims to the most expensive disease.

A person can help himself during a heart attack. Lie down comfortably and put an aspirin tablet of any description under the tongue and ask someone to take you to the nearest coronary care unit without any delay, and do not wait for the ambulance since most of the time it does not turn up in time.

Low white blood cells and low hemoglobin count do not lead to heart problems. But it is ideal to have normal hemoglobin level to increase your exercise capacity.

Sometimes, due to a hectic schedule you may not be able to exercise. So, walking certainly helps. You may walk while doing daily chores at home or climbing the stairs in the house. This may work as a substitute for exercise. Avoid sitting continuously for more than half an hour, and even the act of getting out of the chair and going to another chair helps a lot.

Diabetics are more vulnerable to heart attacks than non-diabetics.

Things one needs to take care of after a heart operation include diet, exercise, medicine, as well as controlling cholesterol, BP and weight.

Persons working on night shifts are not more vulnerable to heart disease when compared to day shift workers.

There are hundreds of anti-hypertensive medicines, but avoid these and go for natural ways of controlling BP by a regular walk and diet to reduce weight and changing attitudes toward lifestyles.

The rate of heart attacks is more in men than in women because nature protects females till the age of 45.

Follow these tips and you can keep the heart in a good condition.