Risk Factors for Heart Disease

If you seriously want to lower your risk of developing heart disease, you should also clearly understand about what are risk factors for heart disease. Generally, there are two major categories of heart disease risk factors; uncontrollable and controllable risk factors.

You may also like to know more about symptoms of heart disease, before continuing!

About more than 7 million Americans have experienced a heart attack in their lifetime -- according to the American Heart Association! And about 1.2 million cases of heart attack /year are caused by coronary artery disease, which in these cases about 40 % of patient were dead. Even about 335,000 people were dead before arriving in their hospital.

Controllable risk factors for heart disease!

There are several controllable risk factors, and if you can control or avoid them then you will be able to prevent or lower your risk of heart disease. Some of them include:

1. Smoking! As well we know there are a lot of serious health problems from smoking (including heart disease). So, please avoid smoking or if you are a smoker you should quit smoking as earlier as possible for better result for your health!
2. Having high levels of bad cholesterol (LDL) and low levels of good cholesterol (HDL) can make worse your risk of the disease!
3. You have high levels of blood pressure and you cannot control this problem as well!
4. Bad lifestyles, particularly like lack of exercise.
5. Overweight! Being over 20 percent of your ideal body’s weight can make worse and give bad effects for your health. Obesity can lead to heart disease and diabetes).
6. You have diabetes, but you don’t or cannot control the levels of your blood sugar as close as possible to the range of normal blood sugar levels.
7. You have elevated levels of CRP or ‘C-Reactive Protein’.
8. Uncontrollable anger (over emotional) and stress can make the heart work harder more often which eventually also may weaken your heart.

Uncontrollable risk factors for heart disease!

As well as the name suggests, there is no helpful option that you can do to manage the uncontrollable risk factors!

1. Gender! There are some studies found that heart disease may be more common in men than in women. In other words, ‘male sex’ may have higher risk than ‘female sex’.
2. The risk of the disease is relatively higher in older age than in younger age. Moreover, another uncontrolled risk factor is post-menopausal. But always keep remember that heart disease can occur at any age!
3. For people who have a family history with heart disease!
4. And some certain races (particularly like ‘Mexican-Americans’, ‘African-Americans’, and ‘Americans-Indians’).

Overall, once again by knowing and controlling controllable risk factors for heart disease, you can reduce your risk of the disease, particularly such as: (a) eat right (prioritize to eat healthy foods), (b) get regular exercise, (c) control & manage your blood pressure, (d) manage well your stress, (e) maintain your ideal weight, (f) manage well your blood sugar levels (especially if you have diabetes), and (g) avoid smoking!

If you have diagnosed with heart disease, don’t forget to follow completely all instructions from your doctor!

You may like to read also about heart attack symptoms in women!

-- Image credit to ‘Getty Images’ for illustration