Preventing heart disease

There are many things you can do to try and prevent heart disease from happening to you in the first place (primary prevention) or to prevent another event such as a heart attack from happening again (secondary prevention).

This involves looking at key areas in your life such as smoking, diet, cholesterol, physical activity levels, blood pressure, diabetes and whether or not you are overweight.  These are called risk factors.  It is also recommended that you think about how you cope with any stress.  Stress is not a risk factor for heart disease, but may make it more likely that you lead a life which includes high risk factors.

There are other risk factors for developing heart disease such as your age, your sex (men are more likely to get heart disease than women) and your family history.  Your doctor may ask you about your immediate family, as this will help assess your risk of developing the disease.  However, even if you do have a family history of heart disease, you can greatly reduce your risk of developing the disease by looking at your lifestyle and reducing the number of risk factors you have.

If you already have heart disease or have a high risk of developing it, your doctor will prescribe you certain medications which will also help to reduce your risk.

The information in this information journey has been adapted from the Chest, Heart & Stroke Scotland leaflets "Reducing the risk of a stroke" and "Reducing the risk of heart disease".

Further infomation on risk factors for heart disease can by following the links below.

Last updated: 22/07/2010