Take care of your heart by reducing risk factors with healthy habits.

Cardiovascular risk is a person’s likelihood to suffer from a cardiovascular disease within a certain period of time. To a large extent, this depends on your risk factors and your predisposition to suffer from this type of illnesses.

Cardiovascular diseases are a set of conditions affecting the heart and the blood vessels, among which are:

• Coronary heart disease: a disease of the blood vessels that provide the cardiac muscle with blood.
• Cerebrovascular diseases: diseases of the blood vessels that provide the brain with blood.
• Peripheral artery disease: diseases of the blood vessels that supply the upper and lower limbs with blood.
• Deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism: blood clots (thrombi) in the veins in the legs, which can come loose and get wedged within the blood vessels in the heart and lungs.

The risk factors that make a person more likely to suffer from these diseases are classified into two groups.

Non-modifiable risk factors:

Age: After the age of 55, the risk to the heart doubles every ten years.

Gender: Generally speaking, men are at higher risk than women of suffering a heart attack. The gap closes when women start the menopause, because research has shown that oestrogen, a female hormone, helps to protect women from heart disease. However, after the age of 65, cardiovascular risk is the same for men and women when other risk factors are similar. Cardiovascular disease affects more women than men and heart attacks are generally more serious for women than they are for men.

Family history: Heart disease tends to be hereditary. For example, if your parents or siblings have had a cardiac or circulatory problem before reaching the age of 55, your cardiac risk is higher than that of a person without this family history. Risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity can also be passed from generation to generation.

Modifiable risk factors:

• High blood pressure
• Cholesterol
• Obesity
• Diabetes
• Smoking
• Sedentary lifestyle
• Excess alcohol consumption
• Stress and anxiety

These are called “modifiable factors” because you can take action to change habits that are bad for your health and replace them with others more conducive to a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

There is normally some kind of connection between the first four factors mentioned, which have points in common which trigger and exacerbate their effects.  When abnormal obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and hypercholesterolaemia occur at the same time, this is called “metabolic syndrome”.

What can I do about these modifiable factors to reduce my cardiovascular risk?

• Monitor your blood pressure.
• Avoid a sedentary lifestyle.
• Keep your cholesterol within acceptable levels.
• Watch your weight.
• Cut down your alcohol consumption.
• Don’t smoke.

Over the coming months we will give you with some advice on dealing with each of these risk factors and teach you how to change them, thus reducing your cardiovascular risk.

This post is also available in: Spanish