It’s never too early to begin forming healthy habits to prevent heart disease. In honor of American Heart Month, medical experts discussed how to maintain a healthy lifestyle during a webinar entitled “Empower Your Best Life: Maintaining a Healthy Heart & Lifestyle.”
Schneps Media, the parent company of Long Island Press, hosted the webinar with Cona Elder Law on Feb. 8.
Dr. Hal Skopicki, co-director of the Stony Brook Heart Institute, spoke about developing healthy habits at a young age to remain healthy and live a long life. He compared taking care of yourself early on in life to saving money for retirement.
“If you’re taking care of yourself, you’re putting money in the bank for your future,” he said. “When you’re going through your working years, you take money and you put it into your retirement accounts because you want it to be there for later, so if things aren’t going as well, you have it there. That’s exactly what exercising, eating healthy, and attacking diseases is all about. That health that you’ve built up for all those years, you can tap into in your 50s, 60s, 70s.”
Preventive health and forming healthy habits can effectively stave off heart disease. Skopicki also called exercising “the fountain of youth” and stressed its importance on maintaining health, as well as eating large portions of vegetables.
In addition, Skopicki gave advice for shedding calories with a list-making system of the foods you enjoy, among other clever tips for staying healthy.
Melissa Negrin-Weiner, a senior partner at Cona Elder Law, added to the conversation by speaking about financial planning for the future that can be done as soon as you turn 18 years old. She spoke about legal documents, such as a living will, to put in place in case of a sudden decline in health.
“It’s where you put your wishes down,” she said. “While you have the capacity to make them and you can make them how you want things to go and what you want to happen if you’re ever in a position where there’s an end-of-life decision to be made, it serves as instruction to your agents, to your family. It takes so much of the burden off because it’s in black and white.”
To watch the replay of this informative discussion about heart health, click here.
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