Blood circulation! If I start stating the advantages of improved blood circulation then it would become a never ending article. If you are reading this for tips regarding improved blood circulation then I will presume you already understand the advantages. So, I won’t try to tell you how important it is that you follow the tips, no matter how hard or time consuming they might seem.
The basic need for improving blood circulation is for people who feel numbness in their body parts even when it’s not winter time. Going to a doctor for expensive medicines to improve your blood circulation? Hold on! Before wasting your money and getting an improved circulation along with a bunch of side effects (yes every medicine has side effects no matter how small), try these tips and tricks and make a habit of following these to drastically improve your poor blood circulation.
The main factors that affect blood circulation are;
- Excess weight.
- Smoking
- Lack of exercise.
- Ageing which reduces flexibility of arteries and decreases blood flow.
Her main question arise how to improve blood circulation naturally. These tips and home remedies basically overcome the problems which slow down your blood flow because an increased blood flow in your body clearly means a happier you!
“These 15 tips and tricks will sufficiently increase your body’s blood flow if practiced and implemented on regularly. Some tips to increase blood flow. Some tricks to increase your blood circulation.”
15. Regular Running Habit
Running is the best way to improve poor blood circulation. This might seem tedious at first to adopt a running habit. But, instead of getting side effects from some medicines you get a lot of benefits from this trick. Make regular running a routine. It doesn’t matter if you run for 5 or 10 minutes or if you run for a whole hour, you just need to run regularly.
Running expands the valves and arteries inside our heart to make way for increased blood flow. This clears out any blockages in the blood flow system and results in a smoother blood flow to all parts of the body.
14. Stretching And Exercising
If you don’t want to exercise or running and want to know “how to improve blood circulation”, you’re making a big mistake. This is especially important for people who have to sit all day long at the desk to work. Take a break every few hours or so to do a few stretches or small 3-5 minute exercises. These exercises include:
- Make little arm circles with one arm at a time.
- Stand up straight and bend down to touch your toes with your hands.
- Take a small walk around the place.
If you have time then get into the habit of some energy consuming activities like running or swimming etc. But remember; if your blood circulation is already poor then don’t start off with heavy exercises. Start off with gentle ones and gradually increase the intensity.
13. Drinking Adequate Amount Of Water
This is probably the simplest way to improve poor blood circulation. The basic principle is that a person should drink at-least 8-10 glasses of water each day. The timing of drinking water can also boost the performance of all body parts including a good circulation.
- One glass of water just after waking up helps the body to clear out the remains of metabolic activities carried out during the night from the circulatory system.
- One glass of water before a bath lowers your blood pressure to prevent your blood from clotting in any part.
- One glass before going to sleep ensures that you don’t get dehydrated during the night and ensures proper blood flow throughout the night.
- Appropriate number of glasses after any activity in which you sweat replenishes the hydration level of the body ensuring no reduction in blood flow due to dehydration.
12. Quit Smoking
I know it’s very hard to quit a smoking habit but at-least try to reduce smoking as much as you can. Smoking introduces carbon into the lungs which can get into your blood stream. Carbon in blood streams creates an obstruction of flow causing a bad circulation of the blood throughout your body.
11. Reduce Stress Levels
If you want to learn how to improve blood circulation, try to get rid of stress first. When you are stressed out, your heart and brain need more amount of blood and oxygen to cope up with the stressed condition. This results in an uneven blood flow as blood flow to skin and legs reduces to give a proper flow to heart and brain. So try to relieve yourself off of stress. Some tips for stress relieve you can try;
- Listening to music has proven to divert mind from the stressing thoughts.
- Breathing exercises.
- Meditation exercises; Yoga, Pilate, etc.
- For more extreme stress cases psychotherapy should be tried.
- Regular exercising such as running daily also reduces stress levels of the body.
10. A Massage
Getting a proper massage from a proper massage parlour also improves blood circulation throughout the body. It is in fact one of the best ways to improve poor blood circulation. There are professional massagers who know special points of a body where massaging drastically improves the blood flow throughout the body.
- A massage generally releases the body from stress and the muscles are relaxed which relieve the tensed out veins and arteries.
- A proper massage also pushes and forces any clotting or obstruction in veins and arteries out of the way which gives a smoother blood flow.
9. Elevate Your Legs
This is a very old, simple, easy and common exercise for improving blood flow. All you need to do is lie down on a flat surface and put your legs on some elevation. You can use cushions under legs for this or putting your feet up on some other high platform would also suffice. This trick is especially helpful when you feel numbness in your body parts or feel a bit dizzy due to low blood pressure.
When you lie down with your legs up, the flow of blood towards all other body parts, especially the brain, increases as blood accelerates coming down from the legs. It improves circulation a lot and removes the feeling of dizziness very effectively.
“Try out these 15 various tips and tricks to enhance your body’s blood circulation. Restore the blood circulation in those parts of your body which have started to feel numb. Restore your whole body’s blood circulation.”
8. A Proper Diet
A proper diet is necessary for maintaining your blood pressure, blood flow and heart activity at a healthy level. The diet is what affects our health the most. A proper diet doesn’t only mean taking the right food, it also means eating at regular time intervals and avoiding out of routine meals. If you’re looking for answers of the question, “how to improve blood circulation”, a proper diet is the first step.
Some foods that are known to help in blood circulation are:
- You might have seen people offering chocolates to someone who just fainted. That’s not just to make them feel better. Dark chocolate specially are known to contain special flavonoids that help in blood circulation.
- Fruits, especially oranges and watermelons, contain chemical substances such as vitamin-C and lycopene which clears out the blood from impurities and strengthens capillaries to prevent build-up of plaque which obstructs blood flow.
- Fish are also a healthy diet and contain fatty-acids that support blood circulation and heart functioning.
- Ginkgo Biloba is another famous tree species. Tablets of ginkgo biloba are available which can be taken with meals. They dilute blood and increase blood flow.
- Use garlic, ginger, sunflower seeds and cayenne pepper while cooking meals as they all are known to help in blood flow.
7. Use The Stairs
Another tiresome activity but a great blood flow trick is taking the stairs instead of an elevator or an escalator. The problem of blood circulation in people increased with the increase in use of escalators and lifts. It reduced the little bit exercising activity the heart had to do back when people took stairs.
So stop using lifts and start using stairs.
- Start with getting up only 3-4 floors using stairs and take the elevator for the rest.
- Increase this gradually as you become comfortable with the level.
- With time your heart will become so much healthy that you won’t feel tired even after getting up 7-8 floors using stairs.
6. Shower
There is a special kind of shower known as contrast shower. The basic method of taking a contrast shower is taking a cold shower followed by a hot shower. It might sound strange but it really helps in reviving your blood flow and improving poor blood circulation.
The concept behind contrast shower is that the cold shower shrinks the vessels and the hot shower afterwards expands them. This creates a pumping effect which helps to drain the blood out of the vessels and into the veins.
5. Proper Sleep
Taking a proper full time sleep is not just a solution for blood circulation problems but it is also an ailment for so many diseases as well. A proper sleep consists of a few important points to remember.
- Sleeping at proper times. A proper night time sleep cannot be compensated even by 2 whole day time sleeps. For sleeping; NIGHT = RIGHT!
- The sleeping time should be 8-10 hours. Lesser sleep gets you sleep deprived while more sleep makes you lazy and reduces blood flow.
- The sleep should be uninterrupted. Interruptions between sleep restarts the sleeping cycle of our brain and results in stressed out sleep deprivation even after a proper timed sleep.
4. Heat Therapies
Heat therapies are useful for people who face numbness in particular parts of the body. This happens when you are already facing a bad circulation problem. To boost up the circulation and improve poor blood circulation, heat therapies need to be done along with all the others tips and tricks.
- The simplest heat therapy that can be done easily at homes is using hot packs or hot water balloons and placing them on areas of the body where the circulation is poor.
- These are the parts where you feel numbness.
- It increases the flexibility of tissues and removes toxins from the cells which improve the blood flow through these parts.
3. Infra-Red Sauna
Infra-Red sauna is just an advanced form of heat therapy. It is for those people who have extremely poor circulation issues. In Infra-Red sauna, infra red rays are used to treat the whole body. Infra red rays penetrate the body just a few inches inside the skin. They produce a heating effect and improve blood circulation in a similar way as the heat therapy does.
- Infra red sauna is an expensive method and it is only available at a few gyms.
- Also, it is not a natural method as the body is being introduced to rays.
- So this therapy should only be used when there is really bad blood circulation issue throughout the body.
2. Coffee
You might have heard of the new study that has found that people who drink coffee have a 30% lower risk of having a cardiovascular arrest (heart attack). Heart attacks occur due to a blockage in the main vessels of heart. These blockages also block blood flow and cause poor circulation problems.
Caffeine in the coffee helps small blood vessels inside the heart to work better. It also increases the blood flow due to an adrenaline rush introduced by the caffeine. This improves blood flow throughout the body as well.
- Decaf coffee does not help in blood flow, only caffeinated coffee helps.
- The issue with caffeinated coffee is that increased usage of it can result in shorter life span.
- So the appropriate amount of coffee per day is a maximum of 2 cups.
1. Proper Dressing
Last but not the least is the most simple of them all, and the one that no one ever thinks about. Proper clothing and proper shoes not only relate to looking good but also relate to staying healthy. The clothes and especially the shoes should be according to the activity that you will be doing. Loose clothes and shoes encourage better blood flow while tight clothes and shoes encourage controlled blood flow during activities of peak blood pressure levels. More walking calls for shoes with a softer sole to reduce impact on the spine and heart, while hard soles of shoes or high heels are better for sitting activities as they do not interfere too much with the blood vessels on the sole of your foot.
OLWOMEN Must Know
All of these tips and tricks are very helpful in maintaining a good blood flow throughout the body but it should be kept in mind that in extremely poor conditions a trip to the doctor is un-avoidable. For people who do not have a very poor blood circulation problem, these tricks will help you stay away from that doctor’s appointment if you regularly follow them and do not overdo any of them.
