What Do You Know About Heart Disease Risk?

Healthy adults can reduce their risk for heart disease and a heart attack by maintaining a healthy weight (a body mass index of less than 25), getting adequate exercise (30 to 60 minutes most days of the week), having regular medical checkups, taking prescribed medications, and adopting healthy habits (not smoking, no excessive alcohol, controlling stress).

Smokers who smoke one pack per day are more than twice as likely as nonsmokers to have a heart attack, according to the American Heart Association (AHA).

They include gender (men have a higher risk of early heart attack), age (your risk of heart attack increases as you get older), and family (you have an increased risk if your father or mother had heart disease).

According to the Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program, released in 2002, heart disease is caused by the interaction of several factors, one of which is high cholesterol. For example, a man who is 40 years old and has a total cholesterol level of 240 mg/dl has a 57 percent chance of developing heart disease in the next 40 years; a woman 40 years old who has a total cholesterol level of 240 mg/dl has a 33 percent chance. A 40-year-old man with a cholesterol level below 200 mg/dl has a 31 percent chance; a 40-year-old woman with a cholesterol level below 200 mg/dl has a 15 percent chance.

Just 30 minutes of daily physical activity, such as walking, cycling, or swimming, can help you reduce your risk. The AHA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, however, recommend 30 to 60 minutes most days of the week, with the additional exercise giving you more benefit.

A glass or two of alcohol daily may decrease your risk of heart disease, but the risk grows if you have more. Men should not have more than two drinks a day; women, one a day.

Your heart must work harder than normal when your blood pressure is high. When this occurs for an extended time, the heart can enlarge and arteries can become scarred and hardened.

The correct number is more than 500,000, according to the AHA.

According to AHA 2005 statistics, 18 percent of men and 35 percent of women who survive a first heart attack will have another within six years.

Moderate exercise approved by your doctor plays an essential role in controlling the disease.

Your risk increases if you're more than 30 percent overweight.

Estrogen provides younger women some protection against heart disease, but that protection is lost after menopause, when women have roughly the same risk as men.

Research shows a link between heart disease and high levels of stress and hostility.

The food you eat has a direct impact on three major risk factors for heart disease—weight, blood pressure, and blood cholesterol.

A treadmill test (or exercise stress test) can help diagnose atherosclerosis, or the narrowing of the heart's arteries.