One of the most important things for leading a heart healthy life is that you need to understand the cardiac risk factors. However, just understanding the risk factors won’t help. You must also take steps for minimizing their impact on the life. Cardiac risk factors are traits which reliably predict an individual’s possibility of developing coronary artery disease.

Certain cardiac risk factors can be controlled while few others are uncontrollable. Some of the risk factors that can be controlled are smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, physical activity, obesity, stress and behavior. The other risk factors that are uncontrollable are age, gender and heredity.

It’s certainly not possible to change the heredity. However, we just need to realize that since people in our blood relation have developed heart diseases at early age, it’s likely that we may also develop the symptoms. So, it’s necessary to reduce the risk factors like it’s essential to eat right, control diabetes, blood pressure, quit smoking and decrease the levels of stress.

Males develop heart diseases at early age. Women mostly develop cardiovascular diseases after menopause. However, younger women are nowadays developing heart diseases more because of their lifestyle habits.

It is true that with ageing, risk of heart diseases also increases. But however, this can be reduced too. There are many ways of reducing the risk of heart diseases after attaining a certain age. For example, quit smoking after attaining 60 years of age for it may add more five to seven years to life.

Now let us read in detail about some of the cardiac risk factors that are controllable. Smoking is one of the leading causes that affect the heart. People’s life span decreases with increase to smoking. In fact, about 20% deaths occur in US because of smoking. So, it’s essential to quit smoking for its hazardous to health.

High cholesterol levels also leads to hearty diseases. About one percent increase in cholesterol level causes about two percent increase in the risk for heart disease. So, it’s essential to control the cholesterol levels. Reducing cholesterol level involves changes in the diet and drug treatment too. Consult doctor for the diet chart and medicines that needs to be taken for controlling cholesterol.

High blood pressure affects the heart. It makes the working of heart difficult which leads to increased risks of heart attack. High blood pressure also affects other vital organs of body like kidneys and brain.

Being overweight generally leads to heart diseases. This is generally because of extra work load to the heart. So, losing weight is necessary.

Physicians stresses on regular exercises for preventing heart diseases. They usually recommend to walk, jog, cycle, swim, row, stir climb, and dance for preventing the occurrence of coronary artery disease.

According to researches, people who usually respond with impatience and anger are at a great risk of the heart stroke. So, changing behavior is essential to prevent heart attacks too.