Condition-specific advice

Recommend your patient builds up to walking for an average of 30 minutes a day to lower their risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes by 30 to 40 per cent ¹. The Heart Foundation’s personal walking plans can support your patient in getting started or finding find a local social group to walk with.

If suitable, recommend higher-intensity aerobic exercise and moderate-intensity resistance training for cholesterol management.²

If your patient has recently had a heart attack, angina, a coronary angioplasty or heart surgery, it’s important that your patient starts slowly, and gradually builds up to this level of activity over time.³

After an acute myocardial infarction it is recommended that patients attend a supervised cardiac rehab program, including virtual programs,to ensure they are exercising at a safe level.³

Your patient may want to follow the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet to significantly improve their blood pressure, even if they don’t lose weight.

Eating a Mediterranean diet may also be recommended to hypertensive patients as it has been shown to reduce cardiovascular disease risk.

Recommend patients reduce their salt intake to improve their blood pressure.⁴

Advise your patients to eat more fruit and vegetables to reduce their risks of stroke and cardiovascular disease.⁵

Encourage dietary change by getting patients to lower saturated fat consumption and increase plant sterol consumption to lower their serum cholesterol.⁶

Circadian timing that aligns with the light-dark cycle is essential for good sleep health and suboptimal timing can affect mental health, cardiovascular function, metabolism, and other elements of overall health.⁷

Physical activity, including mind-body exercises like Tai Chi and more vigorous exercise like cycling has been found to be beneficial for sleep across different age groups and health and fitness levels.⁸

Advise patients with cardiovascular disease to develop habits around:

If your patient is interested in developing better sleep health habits or if they are experiencing periodic episodes of suboptimal sleep, share healthdirect's sleep hygiene practices.

There are strong links between sleep apnoea and heart disease and hypertension and between insomnia and hypertension.⁹

Ensure patients are informed about common sleep disorder symptoms and encourage them to advise you if they experience these symptoms. Untreated sleep problems can significantly affect both quality of life and overall health.

When managing patients with cardiovascular disease, be mindful that some medications can affect their weight and diet, especially beta-blockers. Weight loss can be more challenging for overweight hypertensive patients who are on this medication.¹⁰

Also be mindful of medications prescribed to manage a patient’s weight may affect their cardiovascular system. For example, Phentermine can cause tachycardia so it should not be used in patients with a history of cardiovascular disease. GLP-1 agonists may be a more suitable option.¹¹