Getting older is not for the faint of heart. And when it comes to adopting health-conscious best practices as you age gracefully, that saying can be taken quite literally. Your heart is an incredibly strong and resilient muscle—one of the five vital organs—that pumps blood through your entire body. And unlike the exciting retirement trip you’ve been planning for months where a good dose of R&R or hanging out with your grandkids is the only thing on the to-do list, your heart takes no days off. It works around the clock like a well-oiled machine to keep you and your body going.

Getting older comes with a unique set of challenges. One of those challenges is prioritizing heart health which may have taken a backseat in our younger years. We mistakenly believe there will always be time to “shape up,” ditch the Standard American Diet (SAD), and get our health back on the right track. But as Buddha once said, “The trouble is, you think you have time.”

Over 130 million Americans have at least one chronic condition. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, chronic conditions are defined as conditions that last one year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living. As you get older, your risk for developing chronic conditions increases significantly, and many older adults live with multiple chronic conditions that impact their well-being and quality of life. One such chronic condition is called COPD, or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

More than 2,000 years ago, Hippocrates, considered to be the Father of Medicine, once made the claim that all disease begins in the gut. In more recent years, there has been a large number of scientific articles that prove his point—at least when it comes to metabolic diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

Seasonal allergies affect more than 60 million people each year, but when you’re in the thick of the worst allergy symptoms—like itchy, watery eyes, sneezing, coughing, and post-nasal drip—you might feel alone in your suffering.

Wisdom isn’t the only thing that increases with age. The risk of having a stroke also increases, doubling every ten years after age 55.