Reducing Your Waist and Other Risk Factors for Heart Disease
Hearing about risk factors for heart disease can be scary
and frustrating. What should we do with this information? Here with some good
news about risk factor reduction is Dr. Rose Marie Robertson, President of the
American Health Association:
"The good news is that women can really reduce their risk of heart disease
and stroke by reducing these risk factors and controlling them, and often you
can do it with simple lifestyle changes and when you can't, we have effective
medications that can bring all these risk factors under control".
One type of medication to reduce coronary risk factors are
the preparations which help smokers quit. Ask your doctor if you need help
with this dangerous addiction. If you're a woman whose major risk factor for
heart disease is menopause, ask your doctor if you could benefit from estrogen
replacement therapy. And, if you're fighting the battle of the bulge, Dr. Judith
Korner from Columbia University has this good news:
"Even a very modest amount of weight loss will lower a person's cardiac
risk. A reasonable goal would be about 10% of body weight loss, achieved over
about a six month period. . .so you don't necessarily have to fit into your
prom dress, but if you lose that amount of weight, you should lower your risk".
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Created: 12/18/2000  - Donnica Moore, M.D.