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Preventing Death From Heart Disease
| Posted on Feb 7, 2012 |
Of all of the things that can cause death, heart disease is the number one killer. Even though heart disease has decreased in recent decades, it remains the cause of death for about 40% of us. The good news is that heart disease is often preventable. Pay attention to your risk factors for heart disease and you can dramatically decrease your risk in the future.Heart Disease Risk Factors
There are over 200 risk factors for heart disease, but the five major risk factors are the most important. In fact, more than 85% of individuals that die of heart disease have at least one major risk factor.
The 5 major heart disease risk factors are:
• Cigarette smoking
• Family history of heart disease
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Diabetes
Although you can’t change your family history, you do have control over the other four. You can choose to not smoke and the others (high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes) are all strongly influenced by physical activity and diet habits.
How to Prevent Heart Disease
We have long known that there are many things we can do to decrease our chances of dying of a heart attack. Stop smoking, maintain a normal weight, eat a healthy diet, treat high blood pressure and cholesterol and avoid diabetes are at the top of the list. However, a new study in The New England Journal Of Medicine showed that avoiding just four risk factors will decrease your risk of heart disease by about 90%.
Researchers examined 18 studies of over 250,000 men and women, and found that those who had:
• Normal cholesterol
• Normal blood pressure
• Did not smoke
• Did not have diabetes
by age 55 had a 90% decrease in lifetime heart disease death compared to those that had 2 or more risk factors.
Sounds easy, right? Avoid four things and you decrease your risk of heart disease by 90%!
If you have risk factors for heart disease, now is the time to address them. Talk with your doctor about what you can do to lead a longer, healthier life.
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