Heart disease is the number 1 cause of deaths in America. According to CDC, 1 out of 4 deaths registered in the United States is caused by heart disease. This translates to an annual death toll of 610,000 people. While the stats may vary for different countries, this is the true picture on the ground.

Good news? This is a lifestyle disease which means you can prevent it from happening to you or your loved one. Granted, there are a few out-of-your-control risk factors including ethnicity, race, gender, and heredity but there is so much you can do to bring the risk down.

Some of the lifestyle choices that can put you at a high risk include lack of exercise, poor diet, and excessive consumption of alcohol, smoking, obesity, and diabetes. To minimize your risks, you have no choice but to be intentional about physical fitness, eating a balanced, healthy diet and doing away with smoking as well as consuming the right quantities of alcoholic beverages.

Heart Attack Risk Assessments

An attack simply refers to the blockage of blood flow to the heart. This is often caused by fat or cholesterol buildup. You don’t have to wait for heart attack symptoms to get to you before taking action. You can always perform a prior assessment to ascertain your risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVD). There are plenty of tools for doing all these both online and offline. Such online tools are sort of calculators programmed to predict you risk of contracting heart disease once you key in certain details.

Ideally, you will be asked to enter certain information such as;

• Age

• Blood pressure

• Smoking history

• Any link to diabetes

• Alcohol abuse

• Physical activity

• Total cholesterol

• LDL cholesterol

• HDL cholesterol

• Waist circumference

• Triglycerides

• BMI

• Stress level

• Family history

• Peripheral vascular disease

• Coronary artery disease

• Diet and nutrition

Once you submit the details above, the tool will calculate your risk for a heart attack. It goes without saying that you will need to actually walk into a medical center prior to the online heart attack risk assessment to have these tests done for you. This is where you will have tests like MRI, cardiac CT, exercise stress test, coronary catheterization, a chest x-ray, and an echocardiogram.

When it comes to heart disease, don’t wait too long to act. Advanced age is synonymous to CVD which is why you must not only perform the heart attack risk assessment as early as you can but spread the word to your circles as well.