Coping With Heart Disease

By Richard N. Fogoros, M.D., About.com Guide to Heart Disease

The articles on this page will help you live as healthy and long a life as possible if you have heart disease. And if you don't have heart disease, they will help you reduce your risk of developing heart disease.

1. Risk Factors for Heart Disease
2. Cholesterol and Triglycerides
3. Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome
4. Smoking and Heart Disease

5. Hypertension (high blood pressure)
6. The Importance of Exercise in Reducing Cardiac Risk
7. Women and Heart Disease

Risk Factors for Heart Disease

Here you will find articles that will help you reduce your risk factors for heart disease. Minimizing these risk factors is vitally important even if - perhaps especially if - you already have heart disease. Often, reducing risk factors can go a long way toward making you healthier and improving your chances of long-term survival even if you are already a "cardiac patient." In this section you will find some general information about cardiac risk factors.

• Assessing your risk for heart disease
• What to do if your risk is high
• Five lifestyle choices that save lives
• Women and the cardiac risk factors
• Fish oil and the heart
• Say nuts to heart disease

• Peanuts for the heart
• Alcohol and the heart
• Flu vaccine reduces cardiovascular death
• Should you have your CRP levels measured?
• What to do if your CRP is high
• Stress and heart disease

Cholesterol and Triglycerides

Elevated blood lipids - cholesterol and triglycerides - constitute a major risk factor for heart disease. Here you will find articles that will help you to understand their importance, and to get your lipid levels where they ought to be.

• Cholesterol and triglycerides - a review
• Sorting through the statins
• Cholesterol lowering without prescription drugs
• Trans fatty acids and the heart
• Raising your HDL levels
• Metabolic syndrome

• Statins may be useful even with normal cholesterol levels
• Diabetics need statins
• LDL cholesterol - the lower the better?
• The red yeast rice controversy
• Policosanol a bust?

Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome

Being overweight can contribute to the development of heart disease in many ways, including by causing metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. The articles below will help you cope with these important cardiac risk factors.

• Fat R Us
• Extreme obesity is extremely risky
• Girls who become overweight remain at high risk
• What is your waist-to-hip ratio?
• Sticking to the diet, and not the diet itself, is what matters
• Low fats, or low carb?

• The South Beach diet controversy
• Low glycemic weight loss lasts longer
• New recommendations on obesity
• Metabolic syndrome
• Metabolic syndrome and cardiac risk
• Is diabetes preventable?

Smoking and Heart Disease

Smoking is an extremely strong cause of heart disease. The following articles stress the importance of never starting to smoke, and the importance of quitting if it's too late to never start.

• Heart disease the leading cause of death in smokers
• Even light smoking is harmful
• Passive smoking and cardiac risk
• Most heart attacks in younger patients are due to smoking
• Yet another reason not to smoke during pregnancy

Hypertension (high blood pressure)

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Here are some articles that discuss hypertension.

• Treatment goals for hypertension
• Doctors drop the ball on hypertension
• Salt restriction for high blood pressure
• Melatonin may actually work for hypertension

The Importance of Exercise in Reducing Cardiac Risk

Exercise is extremely important in maintaining cardiovascular health and preventing the onset of heart disease. The following articles will show why exercise is so important, and help you judge how much exercise is really needed to reduce cardiac risk.

• Moderate exercise reduces risk
• How much exercise is really necessary?
• Is exercise the elixir of youth?
• American kids may be even less fit than adults

Women and Heart Disease

Women not only get heart disease as often as men (or perhaps more often), but they also can get different kinds of heart disease, with unique symptoms, diagnostic needs, and treatments. The articles in this section will help you understand the unique aspects of heart disease in women.

• They're not just men with breasts
• Women and the cardiac risk factors
• CRP levels in women
• Subclinical hypothroidism (hidden low thyroid) a risk factor in women
• A risk factor quiz for women
• Guidelines on preventing heart disease in women
• Symptoms of heart disease differ in women
• Women minimize their symptoms of heart disease

• Chest pain in women with "normal" coronary arteries
• Coronary artery disease is often not "typical" in women
• Prinzmetal's angina
• Cardiac Syndrome X
• "Female-pattern" coronary artery disease
• Heart failure in women
• "Broken-heart" syndrome
• Other cardiac conditions especially affecting women