5 Surprising Ways Heart Changes After 50

Your heart is working hard around the clock for you. This is the most important muscle in the body as it moves blood and oxygen to all of your organs and tissues. Since your heart health declines as you age, it's essential to do everything to keep your heart strong as long as possible.

When your heart doesn't get the care it requires, you can develop serious issues with the lining of arteries that can contribute to plaque buildup. Plaque is the main cause of heart attacks and blockage of blood flow in the arteries. Luckily, there are lots of things you can do to help protect your heart and blood vessels like avoiding smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, drinking alcohol in moderation, getting regular exercise, and following a healthy diet.

Promoting good heart health by making healthy choices is a good way to prevent serious heart conditions after 50. But despite this, your heart will change after 50. Here are some changes occurring in your body that hurt your heart:

During the aging process, your brain and neurons start to change, and your sleep can suffer. This means you're more likely to develop sleep problems, wake up during the night, and less likely to have a deep sleep. And your heart needs sleep to work well.

Shorter sleep duration and poorer quality of sleep have been linked to increased stiffness of the arteries and high cholesterol levels. Fortunately, you can fix this problem by consulting an integrative medicine specialist.

People with coronary microvascular disease experience the narrowing of small blood vessels, which negatively affects the blood flow, resulting in chest pain without blockages in the larger vessels.

This condition often affects women during menopause when the levels of estrogen drop rapidly. Coronary microvascular disease is characterized by shortness of breath, chest pain, and feeling like you're about to pass out.

Estrogen is crucial for the maintenance of many body functions, such as bone development, reproductive health, mood management, and heart health. During menopause, estrogen levels decline. This can increase a woman's risk of developing high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol. All these issues are risk factors for heart disease.

The female hormones, especially estrogen, are vital for your heart and help your body manage cholesterol levels. But when estrogen levels start to drop, the bad cholesterol levels raise and good cholesterol levels decrease. Without making changes in the diet and lifestyle, a woman can increase the risk of developing inflammation in heart arteries. Arterial inflammation in combination with high bad cholesterol levels can provoke the formation of blockages. To prevent it, it's important to maintain a healthy weight, get regular exercise, and follow an anti-inflammatory diet.

Your blood pressure naturally increases during the aging process. High blood pressure stresses and stiffens the artery walls which can put you at high risk of blockages. Women's risk of stiffed artery walls increases during menopause, when estrogen levels become lower. This is due to the fact that estrogen is responsible for flexibility in the arteries. Oftentimes, people don't even know that their heart is stressed, since high blood pressure doesn't have any obvious symptoms. It's silently damaging the vessels, heart muscle, and significantly increasing your risk of heart disease. That's why it's essential to visit your cardiologist regularly as you age.