What You Can Do To Help Prevent Heart Disease

Featuring Dr. Graham Wong, MD, MPH, FRCPC, FACC
What You Can Do To Help Prevent Heart Disease
Duration: 1 minute, 5 seconds

So in addition to medications, a critical aspect of treating patients after a heart attack is changes towards a more healthy lifestyle.

And what healthy lifestyle choices do is both a direct effect on the heart, as well as an indirect effect to the heart. A very large trial demonstrated that 90 percent of all heart attacks can be predicted by nine modifiable risk factors, which can be positively influenced by changes in one's lifestyle.

These would include smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, fruit and vegetable intake or lack thereof, truncal obesity, physical inactivity, high levels of psychosocial stress and lack of moderate alcohol intake. These particular risk factors can all be modified with healthier lifestyle choices, including diet, exercise and appropriate structure reduction techniques.

And they are complementary, and extremely important to any medication that your physician or other health care provider will give to you following a heart attack.

Presenter: Dr. Graham Wong, Cardiologist, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Cardiologist