Reducing Your Risk and Risk Factors
The biggest risk for coronary artery disease/heart disease is denial.
You may not accept the fact that you may be at risk for heart disease. You can control many risk factors through diet and lifestyle changes. Some risk factors are modifiable or ones you can change, and others are ones you can't change.
If you have two or more of these risk factors, your chances of developing heart disease are much higher. Other risk factors include obesity, stress, and a sedentary lifestyle.
- Age: Men > 45, Women > 55 or premature menopause without estrogen therapy
- Family History of Premature Heart Disease or Stroke
- Personal history of heart disease or stroke (heart attack, bypass, angioplasty)
- Smoking
- Hypertension (high blood pressure)
- HDL Cholesterol < 35/mg/dl
- LDL Cholesterol > 60/mg/dl
- Diabetes
Risk Factors that reduce risk for CAD: HDL Cholesterol > 60mg/dl
Risk Factors: What Can I Control?
Again, some risk factors are controllable (modifiable), and some are not. What you do to help control or decrease your risk factors makes a big difference. People with more than one risk factor have a larger chance of developing heart disease. So, it is very important to "change what you can".
Modifiable/Controllable
- High Blood Pressure - Make changes in diet, exercise, maintain your medical regime to control high blood pressure.
- High Cholesterol / High Triglycerides - Modify diet and exercise programs; add medications if recommended by your physician
- Weight - Maintain or reach ideal body weight
- Exercise / Lack of exercise - Maintain a good regular exercise program as prescribed by your physician.
- Smoking - If you are a smoker - STOP! Speak to your doctor about ways to help you stop smoking. Among people who do not smoke the risk of a heart attack, or the development of blockages, etc is considerably lower than among people who do smoke.
- Contributing factors - Diabetes (control Diabetes - elevation in blood sugar, obesity, stress (you may not be able to control all the stress in your life but you can control or decrease what you can)
Non-modifiable/Non-controllable
- Increasing age
- Sex/Gender
- Previous history
- Race
- Family History