The researchers arrived at this conclusion by examining health files for more than 600,000 Korean adults and nearly 1,200 American adults who had one of these cardiovascular problems. Before things reach a crisis point, 99% of the participants of the two groups had developed at least one of the four risk factors for common cardiovascular disease: smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or high blood sugar.
“We often think that heart disease can occur without warning, but there is almost always a sign of warning,” said the co-author of the Sadiya S. Khan study, MD, professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
Many people in the study have without knowing several risk factors
Many people who thought they were in perfect health until they had heart failure, a heart attack or a stroke did not know that they were at risk, explains the author of the main study Hokyou Lee, MD, PHD, associate professor of preventive medicine at Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, Korea.
“More importantly, these risk factors rarely existed alone,” said Dr. Lee, noting that more than 9 out of 10 participants had two or more risk factors: 93% of Koreans and 97% of Americans.
Study results, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiologywere consistent between age groups and applied to women and men.
Women under the age of 60 were the least likely to have at least one risk factor – but even in this group, more than 95% of participants did, revealed that the study.
Do not sleep on high blood pressure
High blood pressure was the most common risk factor in the study, which has an impactor up to around 96% of participants.
A current or ancient habit of smoking was the least common risk factor, widespread in around 68% of patients.
The study was not designed to prove whether or how the risk factors for current heart disease could directly cause events such as heart failure, heart attacks or brain vascular accidents. It is also possible that the results based mainly on Korean adults do not reflect what would happen for people from other racial or ethnic groups.
Despite this, the results underline that prevention is certainly possible for many people, explains Yu Chen, Phd, MPH, professor of epidemiology at the New York University School of Medicine which was not involved in the new study.
“The most striking result is that almost all cases of heart disease, stroke or heart failure occurred in people who already had at least one common risk factor,” said Dr. Chen. “This shows that these diseases rarely occur unexpectedly.”
How to reduce your risk of heart attack, heart failure and stroke
- Sleep enough. Adults should target an average of seven to nine hours of sleep per night.
- Take a healthy weight. Try to reach and maintain a body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 25. There are many free online BMI calculators.
- Manage cholesterol. Your doctor can check your cholesterol level with a simple blood test. If your figures are not where they should be, diet, exercise and drugs can help you.
- Manage blood sugar. There are blood tests for so -called A1C hemoglobin levels, which reflect average blood sugar over about three months. Your doctor can give you personalized advice to keep this in a healthy range.
- Lower high blood pressure Try keeping your blood pressure in the recommended range; Lifestyle changes and drugs can help you get there. High blood pressure is defined as a systolic pressure from 130 to 139 mm Hg (the upper number in reading) or 80 to 89 mm Hg of diastolic pressure (lower number).
“Instead of trying to treat risk factors once they are developing or treating heart disease after development, speaking proactively to your doctor is an important step because you can discuss options to reduce your risk for the development of the disease,” said Dr. Khan.
