Valentines Day - Love your Heart - ♥

Gifts from the heart for the heart

What better way to show how much you care than choose gifts for this year's Valentine's Day that are good for heart health.

Gifts that show you care can be either traditional valentine gift ideas such as flowers, chocolate and lingerie but why not think about giving home medical equipement that will help keep an eye on that precious heart?

Flowers

Both giving and recieving flowers can be good for blood pressure. The alluring colours and natural fragrances have a calming effect and promote general well being. However we cannot condone the common practise of ordering flowers that have been grown far away in far away climates and imported usually by airplane just for the week of joy they give.

We recommend that any gift ideas should be considered for both the ethical and environmental imapct they have. For example flowers grom in other global climates when transported around the world by plane and more locally lorry and delivered by other vehicles will contibute a horrendous amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that are affecting the climate. Change the source of the flowers you give to be more local and you will reduce your carbon foot print and contibutions to climate change.

Chocolates

The impact of transporting ingredients has a lesser effect on climate change than that of flowers as they can be carried in dry bulk efficiently and made into confectionary gifts locally.

Lingerie

One to set the heart racing - saucy undies are a certain winner for Valentines Day - not just for women! Men too love the thrill of pulling on a new pair of pants with umourous messages printed across the front - better still by your man the hilarious "trunk" effect trunks.

For the heart - Resperate

RESPeRATE is one of the latest blood pressure lowering devices now available for UK customers. Resperate claim that simply by following its programme of listening to music whilst performing breathing exercises. Although the price tag is perhaps way too high for what you get Resperate has been in use and well recieved in the US for several years and maybe worth considering using alongside existing treatments.

Blood Pressure Monitor from Lloyds Pharmacy?

Once again we have been asked if cheap monitors are worth considering if you want to measure you BP at home. Lloyds pharmacy continue to offer their budgest blood pressure monitor for under ten pounds but you will notice many bad reviews of the lloyds blood pressure monitor on blogs and customer feedback sites. At this stage we can only reiterate using cliniclly tested and approved machines and using them correctly. Whilst Llloyds pharmacy offer great patient information leaflets it is surprising that they seem not to have submitted the lloyds monitor for Hypertension Scociety approval.