A Heart Surgeon’s 5-Item Advice to Avoid Heart Issues

Dr. Jeremy London has performed more than 8,000 heart procedures over his career. That kind of repetition teaches a person things textbooks can't. Now he's sharing what he's learned on TikTok, boiling decades of operating room lessons down to five habits he tells people to avoid if they want their heart to keep working the way it's supposed to.

Items and Habits to Avoid, So You Can Stay Away From the ER

Smoking tops the list, and London doesn't leave room for exceptions. Cigarettes, vaping, marijuana — all of it lands in the same category as far as your lungs and heart are concerned.

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Food and Movement Matter More Than People Think

Ultra-processed food comes next. London's advice isn't about perfection, just direction — stick to whole foods as consistently as you reasonably can, and treat the rest as the exception rather than the rule. A sedentary lifestyle made his list too. Bodies built to move tend to break down faster when they don't get the chance.

Here's the one that catches people off guard: loneliness. London includes it right alongside smoking and diet, treating social isolation as a genuine cardiovascular risk rather than just an emotional one. Get out, stay connected, keep people in your life. It matters more than it sounds.

Stress Rounds Out the List

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Chronic stress closes things out. London's advice is simple: carve out real "me time," the kind that actually relaxes your body and mind instead of just filling a calendar slot between obligations.

None of these five points will shock anyone who's read a health article before. What makes them land differently is the source — a man who's spent thousands of hours literally holding hearts in his hands, watching firsthand what years of ignoring this advice eventually does to a person. For anyone in the Wenatchee Valley juggling work, family, and everything in between, it's a good nudge to actually act on what most of us already know.