Reduce Your Heart Attack Risk

Heart-Healthy Living's Guide to Reducing Your Heart Attack Risk  

Take charge of your health with these important, real-life ways to reduce your heart attack risk and live a healthy, long life.

By Sara Broek
Reviewed by Sharonne N. Hayes, M.D., 2009

Your heart attack risk is based on your cholesterol and blood pressure levels, your weight, your family history, and your diet and lifestyle.

Take two steps to assess your risk level:

Step 1: Get your cholesterol, blood pressure, and weight measured by your physician. Use this guide to ask your doctor the right questions and track your key results.

Step 2: Turn to your relatives to find out your family history. Heart disease and heart attack risk can be passed down through generations. "Your immediate family history is the most important," says Jennifer Mieres, M.D., Heart-Healthy Living advisory board member and a cardiologist at New York University Medical Center. "There is an especially strong link if your siblings have heart disease."

You are at higher risk for heart disease if:

• your brother, father, or grandfather had a heart attack before age 55
• your sister, mother, or grandmother had a heart attack before age 65

"But you're not destined to follow in your family's footsteps," says Sharonne N. Hayes, M.D., Heart-Healthy Living advisory board member and director of the Women's Heart Clinic at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota: "Look at their lifestyle choices as well. If your mother was a heavy smoker, that may have had a strong effect on her heart attack at age 45."

Learn what you can do to defy your DNA.

Read on for 10 simple yet important ways to lower your risk for a heart attack.