How to Prevent Heart Attacks

How to Prevent Heart Attacks

If you know your heart disease risk, you can take steps to prevent a heart attack and cardiac arrest.


Heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women in the United States, but many people still take their heart health for granted, assuming that if they don’t feel any chest pain, their heart must be fine.

But the truth is that a heart attack can strike without any prior warning of cardiac problems. To stop heart trouble before it starts, you need to understand what causes heart disease — and calculate your particular risk.

“We each have the opportunity to control our destiny through the modification of risk factors for which treatment has proven to be beneficial,” says Daniel Levy, MD, director of the Framingham Heart Study and professor of medicine at Boston University in Massachusetts. The key is to focus on the heart attack risk factors that you can change, like unhealthy cholesterol levels, instead of those you cannot change, such as a family history of early heart disease.

Pay Attention to Heart Disease Risk Factors

Researchers in Europe recently tested the effectiveness of cardiac risk factor evaluation and treatment with 1,103 patients at 100 clinics. Half of the patients were randomly assigned to a doctor who would categorize their heart disease risk and then start risk factor interventions, and the other half were assigned to doctors who provided “usual care” (not specifically looking for or addressing heart disease risk factors.)

Heart disease risk was evaluated using data from the Framingham Heart Study. You can do a similar calculation of your own risk using the Everyday Health calculator.

After six months, patients in the evaluation and intervention group had reduced their heart disease risk more than those in the other group — and they were more likely to have their cholesterol levels and blood pressure under control. Smokers in the intervention group were also more likely to quit smoking.

Unfortunately, many doctors and patients are still in the “usual care” mode instead of taking an aggressive stance towards preventing heart disease and heart attacks.

Prevent a Heart Attack

Here are expert tips for preventing a heart attack:

* Calculate risk. There is enough evidence from multiple heart disease risk studies that it is now possible to put a number on your risk of having heart disease within 10 years. The higher your risk, the more aggressive you should be in your efforts to prevent a heart attack.
* Identify priorities. “For some people, there’s a single risk factor that is far outside of a desirable range for which intervention is clearly indicated. For other people there may be other risk factors that are slightly out of range,” explains Dr. Levy. Although you can get a lot of information online or through testing at health fairs and other similar events, working with your doctor is the best way to figure out what you can do to get the most out of your heart attack prevention efforts.
* Lower “bad” cholesterol. If you have high LDL “bad” cholesterol, this is a high priority for controlling heart attack risk over the long-term. Even if you have borderline high cholesterol but you also have some other heart disease risk factors, you must take steps to bring cholesterol levels into desirable range.
* Improve “good” cholesterol. While you work on lowering bad cholesterol you should work on increasing “good” HDL cholesterol levels.
* Stop smoking. Smoking is a significant heart disease risk factor, even if you don’t have any other risk factors.
* Control high blood pressure. You can’t feel it happening, but high blood pressure causes damage to your blood vessels over time.
* Control diabetes. Although the jury is out on whether controlling diabetes can significantly reduce heart disease risk, this is still an important risk factor within your control, says Levy.

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