My Heart Risk

The My Heart Risk™ is a mobile app that helps to track physical activity and predict health status including risks of cardiovascular disease.

  Reynolds Risk Score

If you are a healthy woman without diabetes, the Reynolds Risk Score is designed to predict your risk of having a future heart attack, stroke, or other major heart disease in the next 10 years.

  Your Disease Risk

This interactive tool estimates your risk of coronary heart disease and provides personalized tips for prevention. Anyone can use it, but it’s most accurate for people who have never had any type of heart disease. If you have heart disease, be sure to talk to your doctor about your risk.

  High-protein diets are linked to heightened risk for heart disease, even for vegetarians

Despite the popularity of such diets, the research on how they impact heart health has been relatively scant. A new study, though, published this week by the American Heart Association, shows that eating a lot of protein—derived from both plants and animals—is linked to an elevated risk of cardiovascular failure.

 Even a Little Weight Training May Cut the Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke

Despite the muscle-building, flab-trimming and, according to recent research, mood-boosting benefits of lifting weights, such resistance exercise has generally been thought not to contribute much to heart health, as endurance workouts like jogging and cycling do. But a study published in October in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise provides evidence for the first time that even a little weight training might reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. People appear to gain this benefit whether or not they also engage in frequent aerobic exercise.

 Heart disease risk is hidden in your genes. Scientists are getting better at finding it

Preventing heart disease is a huge public health challenge. And right now doctors have good, but limited, options for finding out who is at greatest risk for it. Doctors know that about half the risk for heart disease comes from lifestyle choices: how much, and what, a person is eating, how much alcohol they drink, if they smoke. The other half is related to genetics, and it’s much harder to assess.

 How Much Fish You Should Eat To Reduce Heart Disease, Stroke Risk

The just-released American Heart Association (AHA) Science Advisory doesn't justify my eating sushi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day during a recent visit to Japan. However, it does re-affirm that eating one to two servings of fish a week may help reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke.

 If your genes put you at risk of heart disease, exercise might be able to help

Regular endurance exercise is thought to help protect folks who carry genes that put them at risk for heart trouble, but just how much can it help them?

 The Sneakiest Heart Risk

Yes, cholesterol is important, but there's another fat—triglycerides—you need to keep tabs on. Here's how to get it under control.

 These foods will lower your risk of heart disease

Low-fat or low-carb? Butter or margarine? Avocado oil or coconut oil? Bombarded with contradictory media reports on the ever-changing landscape of nutrition research, it’s difficult for anyone to know which fats and other foods they should eat, and in what quantities.

 To Slash Your Risk of Heart Disease, Keep Moving

Does heart disease run in your family? You could most likely slash your risk of developing or dying from heart disease if you are physically fit. Being strong helps too. Those are the findings of the largest study to date of the associations between exercise, fitness and cardiac genetics.

The bloody clever science behind the UK's online heart age test

Behind Public Health England's Heart Age Test is more than 70 years of data. And it all started in the small US city of Framingham, Massachusetts.

A Heart Risk Factor Even Doctors Know Little About

While doctors routinely test for other lipoproteins like HDL and LDL cholesterol, few test for lipoprotein(a), also known as lp(a), high levels of which triple the risk of having a heart attack or stroke at an early age. Dr. Lloyd-Jones at Northwestern said that testing for lp(a) should be considered for people with early-onset cardiovascular disease — which means younger than age 50 for men and age 60 for women — or a strong family history of it. Since high lp(a) is hereditary, those who have it often have a parent, sibling or grandparent who suffered a premature heart attack or stroke. When one person has it, it’s important to test other family members too.

A Heart Surgeon's Viral Confession

In the essay, Lundell describes his purportedly newfound understanding that a diet of natural, unprocessed food can prevent and reverse heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. He recalls two and a half misguided decades as a cardiac surgeon prescribing cholesterol-lowering medications and recommending a low-fat diet. He says that he recently realized the error of his ways, stopped practicing, and dedicated his career to heart disease prevention.

Broader Understanding of Heart Disease Risk

Studies of heart disease risk in various ethnic groups can also benefit people outside those groups, researchers say. “Differences across ethnicities tell us something important about biology that could be exploited in different ways,” says Dr. Herrington, of the Mesa study. “The subtleties and the differences between ethnicities can be very informative and can help us in ways that studying one ethnicity cannot.”

Certain Heartburn Drugs Linked to Increased Risk of Heart Attack

Proton pump inhibitor (PPI) therapy was associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction in a data mining study.

Death Rates From Heart Disease And Stroke Could Be Significantly Less With These Drugs, Study Says

The study revealed that the benefits of statins lasted more than a decade after the clinical trial closed. This new information gives credence to physicians’ use of blood pressure and cholesterol lowering drugs to improve survival in patients with hypertension.

Is Vegetable Oil Really Better for Your Heart?

A new look at an old study raises some questions and reignites a debate about saturated fat.

New Cholesterol Drug Lowers Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke

It remains to be seen whether the treatment, which was effective in a large clinical trial, will live up to its promise.

Now I Know What Your Blood Pressure Should Be

Doctors have long wondered what the magic blood pressure number is for people at risk for heart attacks and strokes.

Panel Unveils Shake-up in Strategy to Cut Heart Risk

The current strategy of reducing a person's heart-attack risk by lowering cholesterol to specific targets is being jettisoned under new clinical guidelines unveiled Tuesday that mark the biggest shift in cardiovascular-disease prevention in nearly three decades.

The Lie About Happy Hour and Your Heart

"A beer every day could keep the doctor away," chirped one headline that made the rounds this week. Another boldly proclaimed that a pint-a-day habit could flat-out prevent stroke and heart disease. Yet another promised to explain "Why drinking beer could be good for your heart," and then backpedaled. "Positive effects were negated by heavy drinking," added the subhead. That's better, but let's back up even more.