Why is cardiac rehabilitation important?
- It reduces the risk of future heart complications.
- It improves physical functioning.
- It reduces the symptoms of heart problems.
- It improves mental health.
- It promotes healthy habits.
As its name suggests, cardiac rehabilitation is a process designed for people recovering from or through a heart condition. It’s a supervised program that involves engaging in physical activities, learning about and applying healthy living, and even counseling on how to relieve stress and improve mental health.
The importance of cardiac rehabilitation cannot be stressed enough, and in this article, we’re going to focus on why. Cardiac rehabilitation has positive effects on your health after any sort of heart condition including a heart attack, heart failure, heart surgery, and more. Conversely, not going into cardiac rehabilitation or doing the tasks improperly has many risks that could range from problematic to critical.
What Is Cardiac Rehabilitation?
You might wonder what cardiac rehabilitation entails or what to expect throughout the process.
Cardiac rehabilitation includes a medical checkup, where your physical and medical limitations will be examined by a medical team. This will be the basis for the rehabilitation program which will generally last 1 to 2 weeks.
Activities to expect include exercise to keep your heart healthy, mostly low-impact ones that have a low risk of injury, strength-building, and resistance training exercises. Typically, this will be done around 3 times a week.
You can also expect to be educated about your lifestyle. This includes lessons on keeping up a heart-healthy diet, exercising regularly, maintaining a healthy weight, and getting enough sleep. For smokers, this will also include quitting.
If needed, your healthcare provider might also recommend counseling since it’s common for those who have experienced a heart condition to develop certain negative feelings due to their situation.
Now, let’s move on to why cardiac rehabilitation is necessary and important.
It Reduces the Risk of Future Heart Complications
This is the most important function of cardiac rehabilitation. Patients who have undergone such things as a heart attack are likely to experience one again if they keep up unhealthy or damaging habits.
Research has found that cardiac rehabilitation reduces the chance of dying within the 5 years following a heart attack or bypass surgery by about 35%. This is not coincidental—the habits you form, including exercising and the diet you maintain, are going to be responsible for your prolonged healthiness.
It Improves Physical Functioning
Since cardiac rehabilitation teaches you how to live healthier and let go of unhealthy habits like smoking or being sedentary, it strengthens your heart and body.
Daily activities like carrying objects or climbing stairs will become easier. Over time, your heart will not have to struggle whenever you are exercising, and maintaining a healthy weight will be more manageable.
It Reduces the Symptoms of Heart Problems
Before your heart attack or heart disease, you might have experienced symptoms that indicated that something is wrong. These could be chest pain or discomfort, pain in the upper back or neck, indigestion, heartburn, nausea or vomiting, extreme fatigue, dizziness, upper body discomfort, or shortness of breath. You might still experience some or all of these things even after your diagnosis or experience.
Cardiac rehabilitation, in a sense, trains your heart to be more healthy. Doing so lessens the symptoms or makes them more manageable. Therefore, you’ll have an easier time because these symptoms won’t bother you too much anymore.
It Improves Mental Health
It’s common for people to feel depressed after a heart attack or heart failure.
Negative feelings after the experience may include a sense of uncertainty about their future, a lack of confidence in their ability to be productive, guilt about previous habits that might have increased their risk for the condition, and embarrassment or self-doubt over their some things they can no longer do as well as before. All these can lead to changes in attitude and mood as well.
It Promotes Healthy Habits
Finally, cardiac rehabilitation is not meant to last forever, but it does leave habits that will keep you healthy if you keep them up.
We’re certain that you’ve heard these habits before—from exercising to maintaining a proper diet—so you already know that applying them to your life will make you live longer. Best of all, cardiac rehabilitation makes it easier to start and trains you to maintain these good habits.
Key Takeaway
Now that we’ve discussed the importance of cardiac rehabilitation, don’t underestimate its effectiveness and purpose. You’d be surprised at how much your condition can improve in a matter of weeks, and if you maintain these habits, it could be a change in life.
If you’ve recently undergone heart surgery or are living with a heart condition, refer to Perpetual Help Medical Center – Las Pinas for all your medical needs. Our teams of doctors are always glad to help you. Contact us today to know more!
