8 Science-Backed Ways to Prevent Heart Attacks, According to New Guidelines

Experts have issued a new set of guidelines on the best ways to prevent first heart attacks, strokes and heart failure — and for the first time, they focus squarely on the patient. The new guidelines recognize how doctors can support people to not only address their medical risk factors, but also to change their behaviors and lifestyles in order to reduce their risk. The latest revisions to the guidelines, issued by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA), were announced at the annual meeting of the ACC. They are intended to help doctors figure out a patient’s risk of having heart trouble and to navigate the best ways to treat those risk factors. “It’s important for people to realize that more than 80% of heart attacks, strokes and peripheral arterial disease events are preventable, so early recognition of risk factors is important,” says Dr. Roger Blumenthal, director of the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone center for prevention of cardiovascular disease and co-chair of the ACC/AHA Prevention Writing Committee. “We want people to realize that it’s not rocket science on most of these things. It’s good common sense. And for doctors, it’s about motivating people when they come in for each and every visit — no matter what they come in to see us for.” The recommendations, which are published in the AHA’s journal Circulation, reiterate previous advice on a number of measures b...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Heart Disease Source Type: news