Heart Disease Risk Factors

Risk factors are habits or traits that make a person more likely to develop a disease. Many of those for heart disease can be controlled.

These include:

• Cigarette smoking
• High blood pressure
• High blood cholesterol
  (high total cholesterol and high LDL cholesterol)
• Low HDL cholesterol
• Overweight
• Physical inactivity
• Diabetes

The more risk factors a person has, the greater the risk of heart disease.