Reduce Your Heart Disease Risk

If you’ve got a heart, heart disease could be your problem. Heart
disease affects women just as much as it does men. But everyone can
take steps to reduce their chance of developing the disease.

How? By preventing or controlling behaviors and conditions known to
increase its risk. They’re called “risk factors,” and there are two
types—those you can change and those you can’t. Luckily, most of
them can be changed. These are smoking, high blood pressure, high
blood cholesterol, overweight/obesity, physical inactivity, and diabetes.

Eating for Heart Health - How Nutrition Affects Three Key Risk Factors

What you eat can help keep your heart beating strong - or lead to overweight, high blood pressure, and high blood cholesterol, three key factors that increase the risk of developing heart disease. (See the Box on page 5 for more on risk factors and heart disease.)

Here’s a brief look at why these three risk factors are so important: