For many of us, a large proportion of the week is spent at work.
Whether you are sitting behind a desk, travelling between meetings, working from home or moving around a busy workplace, the habits you develop during your working day can have a significant impact on your long-term health.
One area that deserves particular attention is heart health.
Our cardiovascular system works continuously to deliver oxygen and nutrients around the body. While we may not think about our heart very often, factors such as physical inactivity, poor diet, smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, excess weight, stress and poor sleep can all contribute to cardiovascular risk.
The good news is that supporting your heart does not necessarily mean making dramatic lifestyle changes.
Small improvements to your normal working day can add up. Moving more, improving your lunch, managing stress and understanding your own health measurements can all contribute towards better cardiovascular health.
Here are some practical ways to make your working day a little more heart healthy.
Move More During the Working Day
For office workers in particular, one of the biggest challenges is simply how much time we spend sitting down.
You might drive to work, sit at your desk for most of the day, drive home and then spend the evening sitting on the sofa. Even people who exercise regularly can accumulate significant amounts of sedentary time.
The answer does not have to be spending your lunch break completing a hard workout. Instead, look for opportunities to introduce movement throughout the day.
You could:
- Walk over to speak to a colleague rather than sending an email.
- Take the stairs rather than the lift.
- Go for a short walk during your lunch break.
- Stand and move regularly between tasks.
- Suggest a walking meeting when appropriate.
- Park slightly further away from the workplace.
- Use part of your commute to walk or cycle where practical.
These activities might seem insignificant individually, but together they can substantially increase how much movement you accumulate across the week.
Try not to think about physical activity as something that only counts when you are wearing gym clothes. Movement is movement, and your working day provides plenty of opportunities to do more of it.
Make Your Lunch More Heart Healthy
Nutrition is another important part of cardiovascular health, and lunch is one meal where workplace habits can easily influence what we eat.
When we are busy, convenience often takes priority. Meal deals, takeaways, pastries and highly processed snacks can quickly become regular features of the working week.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying these foods occasionally, but your everyday choices matter.
A heart healthy lunch should ideally contain a combination of vegetables or fruit, wholegrain carbohydrates, a good source of protein and healthy fats.
Simple options could include a wholegrain wrap with chicken and salad, a lentil and vegetable soup with wholegrain bread, or a salmon and wholegrain rice salad with plenty of vegetables.
Foods containing soluble fibre, including oats, beans, lentils and some fruits, can also form part of a diet that helps manage cholesterol.
Think about what you can add to your lunch rather than simply focusing on what you need to remove.
Could you add another portion of vegetables? Swap white bread for wholegrain? Add some beans to your salad? Choose fruit alongside your lunch?
Small improvements are often easier to maintain than trying to completely redesign your diet overnight.
Know Your Numbers
One of the challenges with cardiovascular health is that you cannot always tell what is happening simply by how you feel.
Someone may feel perfectly healthy while having raised blood pressure or cholesterol.
This is why understanding some of your basic health measurements can be useful.
Blood pressure is particularly important. Persistently raised blood pressure increases the workload placed on the cardiovascular system and is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
Cholesterol is another useful measurement. Cholesterol itself is necessary for normal bodily function, but an unhealthy cholesterol profile can contribute to fatty deposits developing within arteries.
Other measurements, including waist circumference and body composition indicators, can also contribute towards understanding your overall health.
Knowing your numbers does not mean becoming obsessed with them. It means having useful information that can help you make informed decisions about your health and, where appropriate, seek further professional advice.
Workplace Health Checks
One way employers can help their workforce understand their cardiovascular health is by providing access to workplace health checks.
Corporate Personal Wellbeing offers 30-minute health checks designed as a proactive way of assessing and monitoring employee health. They are particularly suitable for employees who may not require statutory health surveillance but can still benefit from proactive health screening, including office-based teams.
Typical CPW health checks can include:
- Blood pressure
- Cholesterol
- Blood oxygen levels
- Height and weight, including BMI
- Waist measurement
- Personalised health advice
Depending on the individual, advice from the occupational health professional may also cover areas such as exercise, nutrition and smoking cessation.
For heart health in particular, measurements such as blood pressure, cholesterol and waist circumference can provide useful information about potential cardiovascular risk factors.
Perhaps more importantly, the health check creates an opportunity to have a conversation about health.
An employee might discover that their blood pressure is higher than expected. Another person may realise that their activity levels have gradually decreased since starting a more sedentary role. Someone else might benefit from making relatively small changes to their diet or exercise habits.
Identifying these issues provides an opportunity to act.
CPW also provides organisations with anonymised reports highlighting areas that may require further attention. This can help employers understand wider health trends across their workforce without focusing on individual employee information.
Rather than waiting until someone becomes unwell, workplace health checks support a more proactive approach to employee health and wellbeing.
Manage Workplace Stress
Heart health is not purely about exercise and nutrition.
Our mental and physical health are closely connected, and prolonged periods of stress can influence cardiovascular health both directly and indirectly.
Think about what happens during a particularly stressful working week.
You may sleep less, exercise less, eat differently, drink more caffeine or alcohol and spend less time doing the things that normally help you relax.
Managing stress therefore forms an important part of looking after your overall health.
During particularly busy periods, try introducing small recovery opportunities into your day.
Step away from your desk at lunchtime. Spend five minutes outside. Practise some slow breathing before your next meeting. Talk to a colleague if your workload is becoming difficult to manage.
Employers also have an important role to play. A healthy workplace should encourage realistic workloads, regular breaks, good communication and an environment where employees feel comfortable asking for support.
Protect Your Sleep
Sleep can sometimes be the first thing sacrificed when life gets busy.
We stay up later to finish work, answer emails in the evening or spend another hour scrolling through our phones before bed.
However, consistently poor sleep can affect numerous areas of health, including blood pressure, appetite, stress levels, recovery and our ability to make healthy decisions.
Creating a regular sleep routine can help.
Try going to bed and waking at approximately the same time each day, reducing caffeine later in the afternoon and creating some separation between work and bedtime.
If you work from home, this separation can be particularly important. When your kitchen table, spare room or bedroom becomes your workplace, it can become difficult to mentally switch off.
Create an end-of-day routine. Shut down the laptop, put work equipment away and give yourself time to transition from work into your evening.
Use Your Lunch Break
Your lunch break is one of the easiest opportunities to introduce heart healthy habits into your working day.
Instead of spending the entire break sitting at your desk, try using ten or fifteen minutes for movement.
A brisk walk around the building or local area can increase your daily activity without requiring a gym membership or change of clothes.
You can also use your lunch break to mentally disconnect from work.
Eat away from your computer where possible, get some fresh air and allow yourself a genuine break.
You may find that you return to work feeling more refreshed and focused, while also accumulating valuable physical activity.
Build a Healthier Workplace Culture
Promoting heart health should not simply be left to individual employees.
Organisations can make healthier choices easier.
Walking challenges, active meetings, healthier catering options, access to drinking water, workplace health checks and wellbeing initiatives can all encourage employees to think about their health.
Leadership matters too.
If managers routinely work through lunch, send emails late into the evening and never take breaks, employees may feel that they are expected to do the same.
On the other hand, when managers actively participate in wellbeing initiatives and encourage employees to take breaks and look after themselves, healthier behaviour becomes part of workplace culture rather than an additional task.
Small Changes Can Protect Your Heart
Heart health is not built around one workout, one healthy lunch or one health check.
It is the result of the habits we repeat.
Taking a ten-minute walk at lunchtime might not feel significant today. Choosing a higher-fibre lunch once might not seem important. Standing up and moving between meetings can feel almost too simple to matter.
But repeat these behaviours across hundreds of working days and they become meaningful.
The workplace is therefore an ideal environment for cardiovascular health promotion.
Move regularly. Eat a varied and balanced diet. Manage stress. Prioritise sleep. Understand your health measurements and take opportunities to have your health checked.
Most importantly, do not wait until something feels wrong before thinking about your health.
Being proactive gives us an opportunity to identify potential risks, make positive changes and build healthier habits before problems develop.
A healthier heart supports more than our working day. It supports our energy, our physical capacity, our life outside work and our long-term health.
And many of the changes that help protect it can start during your next working day.