Be Careful if You Smoke or Drink Excessively For a Long Time! A Look At the Top 10 Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Disease
Most risk factors for cardiovascular disease can be treated, controlled, and improved. Although some factors cannot be controlled, such as age, gender, and family history, not all factors are innate, such as high blood pressure. (Hypertension), smoking, high cholesterol (hyperlipidemia), obesity, lack of exercise and diabetes (Diabetes) are all risk factors for heart disease. What are the modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease? What are the immutable risk factors? This article explains it in detail for you!
Modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease
In addition to putting you at risk of disease, bad living habits may lead to the occurrence of heart disease and other cardiovascular diseases if you do not make timely changes. The following are 6 variable risk factors:
- Suffering from high blood pressure
High blood pressure is the primary risk factor for heart disease or stroke. However, high blood pressure can be prevented and well controlled as long as it is correctly diagnosed by a doctor and follows medical advice. - The low-density cholesterol in the body is too high and the high-density cholesterol is too low.
Abnormal blood lipids refer to a variety of lipids contained in the blood, mainly including cholesterol (Cholesterol) and triglyceride (Triglyceride).
If the level of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) is higher than normal, or the level of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) is too low, it will increase the chance of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Most of the cholesterol in the blood is produced in the liver after consuming saturated fat in the diet, so attention should be paid to the saturated fat in the diet. The way to control LDL cholesterol is to reduce saturated fat in our diet, exercise, and use medications as prescribed by your doctor. - Smoking
Smoking or chewing tobacco will increase the risk of heart disease, especially young smokers, heavy smokers or female smokers, who are all at high risk of cardiovascular disease. However, regardless of the length of smoking, as long as you quit smoking, you can reduce the damage to blood vessels caused by nicotine, the component of tobacco, and significantly reduce the risk of heart disease.
In addition, second-hand smoke is also one of the risk factors. As long as 30 minutes of exposure to second-hand smoke is enough to cause oxidative stress in the blood vessels of non-smokers, causing progressive damage, leading to intravascular cell damage, cardiovascular sclerosis, and increased cardiovascular disease. Cardiovascular disease prevalence. - Lack of exercise
People with insufficient physical activity and lack of exercise, who are often overweight, are 50% more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease or stroke, and are also prone to diabetes.
Diabetic patients have high blood sugar index and increased blood viscosity, which can lead to damage to blood vessel walls. Especially for patients with Type 2 diabetes, the risk of cardiovascular disease can be doubled. Failure to detect and treat diabetes early is the main cause of complications such as heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, amputation and blindness. - Long-term negative emotions
Long-term negative emotions such as anxiety, depression, social isolation, and living under long-term stress will also increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. Long-term accumulated stress will stimulate the sympatho-adrenal medullary system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system, increase cortisol and catecholamines in the blood, increase blood flow and vascular resistance, and then produce hypertension and arteriosclerosis, as well as arrhythmias. Or a heartbeat that is too fast.
As for sudden stress, a large amount of “catecholamines” will suddenly increase, causing primary ventricular fibrillation and increasing the risk of death from heart disease. - Drinking too much
Drinking 1 to 2 glasses of alcohol a day can effectively reduce the risk of heart disease by 30%. However, excessive drinking may not only cause acute alcoholic hepatitis, fatty liver, cirrhosis and other diseases, but may also affect the cardiovascular system. In the early stages, it may Mild chest pain and arrhythmia will gradually develop into heart enlargement, ventricular failure, and eventually stroke or subsequent heart disease.
Immutable risk factors for cardiovascular disease
- Age:
Even without being devastated by disease, heart function will still undergo physiological changes with age. As you age, heart disease becomes more common and can even make the condition or treatment more complicated. - Gender:
Middle-aged men have a higher risk of heart disease than women. But premenopausal women are at the same risk as men. The risk of stroke is about the same for men and women. - Family history:
People with a family history of premature heart disease, such as a direct female blood relative such as a mother who develops a heart attack or stroke before the age of 65, or a direct male blood relative such as a father who develops the disease before the age of 55, will have a significantly increased risk of developing the disease. - Race:
Asians and Africans have a higher incidence rate than other races.
To reduce your risk of coronary heart disease and heart disease, try to control each risk factor. As long as you are willing to make lifestyle changes, you can effectively control many risk factors for coronary heart disease.