7 at-home strategies for heart attack recovery

If you've had a heart attack, your doctor may refer you for cardiac rehabilitation, a medically supervised program designed to help you recover and improve your long-term heart health. Based on your personal needs, your cardiac rehab team will design a curriculum addressing three major areas: physical activity, lifestyle changes and mental wellbeing. The strategies they teach you will become a part of your everyday life—if you work at making them into habits.

"The purpose of cardiac rehab is to teach you a healthy cardiovascular lifestyle that you can take home with you," says Jason Coker, MD, an interventional cardiologist at Trident Medical Center in Charleston, South Carolina. "But if you stop it when you get home, the benefits of it go away, essentially."

So, how can you make what you learn in cardiac rehab stick when you're away from the clinic or hospital? Try these tips.