Can coronary artery disease be prevented?

Can coronary artery disease be prevented?

You can certainly make changes that will lower your chance of developing coronary artery disease, but this condition is not 100% preventable. This is because there are two kinds of risk factors: Those that can’t be changed (nonmodifiable) and those that can be (modifiable).

Nonmodifiable risk factors include older age, male gender, a family history of heart disease and genetic factors. See the question, “who gets coronary artery disease” earlier in this article for more information.

However, there are many risk factors that you can modify. These are mostly lifestyle changes like losing weight if you’re overweight, stopping smoking if you smoke, keeping your blood pressure and cholesterol level at their goal numbers and managing diabetes. See “lifestyle changes” under the treatment section of this article for more examples.

Keep in mind that the more risk factors you have, the higher the chance of having heart disease. Fortunately, you can choose to help yourself and reduce the risk of disease by taking control over your risk factors that can be changed.