What Are The Most Common Risk Factors For Heart Disease?

— -- Question: What are the most common risk factors for heart disease?

Answer: Well, the common risk factors for coronary artery disease are likely very familiar to you. They include some things that a person can change about themselves and some others that they can't. So, for instance, we can't change our gender, we can't change the fact that we're aging, we can't change our family predisposition to coronary artery disease. And yet, coronary artery disease runs in families, it's more common in men than in women, and indeed it becomes more common as we get older.

Thankfully though, there are some more common risk factors that can be changed by the individual. These include things like high blood pressure, which we can control; high cholesterol, which we can also treat; and then finally, whether you chose to smoke or not is something that's a personal choice and we can control as well. And obviously smoking is another common risk factor.

Finally I would add that there are two other more minor risk factors, if you will, that make the others more common. They are obesity and diabetes. And in this country, unfortunately, they're becoming all the more common.

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