Preventing Heart Disease

By Richard N. Fogoros, M.D., About.com
Created: May 15, 2007

The best way to "treat" heart disease is to avoid it altogether. Taking steps to adopt a healthy lifestyle can significantly reduce your risk of heart disease, and increase your odds of living a long and healthy life. Here's what you need to know.

Assessing your own risk for heart disease To a large extent, people can control most of the the factors that cause heart disease. To decide which risk factors to focus on, first you should compute YOUR personal cardiac risk. Here are resources for doing so.

What to do if your cardiac risk is high If you are at high risk for heart disease, there's a lot you can do to reduce that risk. Here are some suggestions about where and how to start.

Cardiac risk factors and how to control them Here is information on the risk factors themselves, (including cholesterol, hypertension, poor diet and obesity, smoking, diabetes or metabolic syndrome, and lack of exercise,) and what you can do about them.

Cholesterol and triglyceride disorders High cholesterol and high triglycerides, good cholesterol and bad cholesterol - they're important but confusing. We try to straighten it all out here.