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What Increases Your Risk
Some risk factors for coronary artery disease (CAD), such as your sex, age, and family history, cannot be changed. Other risk factors for CAD that are related to lifestyle often can be changed. Your chance of developing coronary artery disease increases with the number of risk factors you have.
Coronary artery disease risk factors include:
- Cigarette smoking.
- High blood pressure.
- High cholesterol.
- Diabetes.
- Obesity.
- Lack of exercise.
- Personality factors and high stress level.
- Using birth control pills and you smoke and are over age 35, or you have a family history of atherosclerosis or blood-clotting disorders.
- Using hormone therapy after menopause. This risk is higher for some women than others.
Smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and physical inactivity are all risk factors for coronary artery disease that can be modified and in some cases eliminated with lifestyle changes and medication. Diabetes and obesity can sometimes be prevented when lifestyle changes are made early in life.
Risk factors that you cannot change:
- Family history of heart disease. You have a first-degree male relative (for example, your father or brother) who got CAD when he was younger than age 55. Or you have a first-degree female relative (for example, your mother or sister) who got CAD when she was younger than 65.
- Family history of high cholesterol.
- Gender. Men generally develop CAD 10 years earlier than women. But women who have diabetes may develop CAD at a younger age. By age 60, CAD is one of the leading causes of death in both sexes.
- Age. People over 65 are more likely to have CAD.
Research has shown that having metabolic syndrome also increases your risk of coronary artery disease. 4 People with metabolic syndrome have a group of abnormal findings related to their metabolism, including excess body fat (particularly abdominal obesity); high triglycerides, high blood pressure, and high fasting glucose; and low HDL.
The National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) has developed a risk assessment calculator to estimate your risk of having a heart attack or suffering from coronary death over 10 years. This tool is designed to estimate risk in adults age 20 and older who do not have heart disease or diabetes.
Click here to calculate your risk of having a heart attack in the next 10 years 
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| Last updated: | May 29, 2007 |
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| Author: | Robin Parks, MS |
| Reviewed By: | Caroline S. Rhoads, MD - Internal Medicine, Ruth Schneider, MPH, RD - Diet and Nutrition |
| Editors: | Kathleen M. Ariss, MS, Pat Truman |
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