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With Valentine's Day around the corner, let's talk about our hearts.
Here are some of the risk factors for having a heart attack or stroke or a serious cardiovascular disease (called CVD). High blood pressure. Smoking. High cholesterol. Diabetes. Obesity.
The Cardiovascular Lifetime Risk Pooling Project reported its findings recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, according to a National Institutes of Health press release. Bottom line: If you have two risk factors, your chance of “having a major CVD event” goes way up.
From the report: For example, 45-year-old men with two or more risk factors had a 49.5 percent chance of having a major CVD event by age 80, whereas men with optimal risk-factor levels had only a 1.4 percent chance. Forty-five-year-old women with two or more risk factors had a 30.7 percent chance of having a major CVD event by age 80, while those with optimal risk-factor levels had a 4.1 percent chance.
How do your odds look?
(S-R archives photo)
Spokesman-Review features writer Rebecca Nappi, along with Catherine Johnston, an Olympia, Wash., writer who works in hospital administration, write about issues of grief when facing serious illness, dying, death and other forms of loss.
Ask a question: Rebecca and Catherine answer grief questions in their syndicated EndNotes column for McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Email them at endnotescolumn@gmail.com.
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