Women Take 10 For A Healthy Heart (NAPSA)—Taking 10 minutes a day to strengthen your heart could help you make it through the day with energy left over. Aspart of its “Take 10 for Your Heart” 2005 heart health awareness program, the National Women’s Health Resource Center has information and tips to help women build their hearts’ endurance so they can go dancing after a hard day’s work or take a long hike with the family or haul bags of mulch from the car to the flower bed—andstill show up for work on Monday. “Moderate-intensity cardio exercise is the way to promote your heart’s endurance,” according to Sharonne N. Hayes, MD, FACC, a cardiologist and director of the Mayo Clinic Women’s Heart Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “You push your heart to work a little bit harder than normal. That increases the number of heartbeats per minute during the activity and strengthens the heart’s contractions. Your heart pumps more blood which gets the oxygen in the blood to the lungs, heart and other muscles. By slowly increasing the amount of work you ask your heart to do, you build its stamina. The more yourheart does, the moreit is able to do.” Consider these simple ways to build your cardiac endurance: If you're just starting to walk in 5- or 10-minute sessions, add extra walks into your schedule. Aim to walk five days a week. When those walks begin to feel easy, increase the length of time you walk on each. e Adding short burst of increased effort during your regular exercising also helps build endurance. Keep variety in your exer- ge 10 fon, a = ny o By boosting your endurance—in aslittle as 10 minutes a day—you can do more and enjoy more. cise. Try a beginner’s aerobics class, go dancing or dust off the old bicycle. After you have been doing cardio exercise regularly, consider using weights once or twice a week. Before starting any new exercise program, check with your doctor. With better heart endurance, you can also lower your risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol or high blood pressure. A stronger heart can also help you become more physically active and lose weight. All of that and you mayfeel like going to your book club rather than saying, “I’m tootired.” Go to www.healthywomen.org, the Web site of the National Women’s Health Resource Center, for more information on “Take 10 for Your Heart,” or call toll-free 1- 888-986-9472. The nonprofit National Women’s’ Health Resource Center helps women educate themselves about health topics that concern them.
