The Benefits of Assessing Your Risks for Cardiovascular Disease

We started this discussion with a scary statistic — one person dies every 36 seconds of heart disease in the US. To counter this, here’s another statistic that should bring some hope: A whopping 80% of cardiovascular disease is preventable.

Our team here at Advanced Cardiovascular Specialists understands these revealing numbers better than most, and our goal is to bring that 80% down through prevention. One of the best ways to accomplish this goal is by assessing your risks for cardiovascular disease.

Here’s a closer look at the numbers and how you can stay one step ahead of cardiovascular disease.

Who’s at risk?

Any number of factors place you more at risk of developing cardiovascular disease, including:

• Carrying too much weight
• Age (older people are more prone to cardiovascular issues)
• Race (African Americans and Hispanics have a greater risk)
• Heredity
• High cholesterol
• High blood pressure
• Pre-existing conditions like diabetes
• Lifestyle habits like smoking and heavy drinking
• Stress
• Physical inactivity

This list is by no means comprehensive, but it gives you an idea of the many factors that can play a role in your cardiovascular health.

Should I be assessed?

You can assess your cardiovascular health in many different ways, from a simple blood pressure check to a more comprehensive evaluation and testing of your cardiovascular system. With that in mind, we believe that everyone should assess their risks to some degree through routine check-ups.

If, however, you meet several of the risk factors mentioned above, we believe that you should consider having us assess your risks for more serious cardiovascular disease.

To provide added incentive, many early signs of cardiovascular disease don’t produce any symptoms. For example, high blood pressure is often referred to as the “silent killer” since there are no outward symptoms of the problem. 

Along the same lines, coronary artery disease, which is the most common type of heart disease, often only makes itself known once you’ve had a heart attack.

Our point here is that you shouldn’t wait for your cardiovascular system to send a signal that it’s in trouble, as that signal can often be life-threatening.

Mitigating your risks

Getting back to our list of risk factors, you can see that many are well within your control to change. If we find a problem during your cardiovascular assessment, we can recommend a treatment program along with lifestyle changes that can reverse the course of your heart health for the better.

The first step to improving your cardiovascular health is to contact our office in Mountain View, California, to explore whether an assessment is right for you.