Feb. 6 is National Wear Red Day, part of a campaign aimed to raise awareness about heart disease, women’s No. 1 killer.

The American Heart Association encourages women to wear red Feb.6 and to make donations to support heart disease research and education.

 

Each day, cardiovascular diseases claim the lives of 2,400 Americans, an average of one death every 37 seconds. Cardiovascular heart disease affects one in three Americans and remains the No.1 cause of death in the United States. Every year, heart disease kills 17 times more women than breast cancer.

 

A healthy lifestyle can significantly reduce your risk of heart disease and increase your chances of living a long and healthy life. High cholesterol, hypertension, poor diet and obesity, smoking, diabetes and lack or exercise are among the risk factors associated with heart disease. People with high blood pressure also face an increased risk of having a stroke or a heart attack.

 

According to a recent report published earlier this year in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, heart disease deaths have fallen 30 percent in the last ten years. The decline is probably due to better control of cholesterol and blood pressure, declining smoking and better medical treatments. Better care for heart attack patients also contributes to the decline.

 

If your cardiac risk is high, you should stop drinking and smoking, watch your diet – a healthy diet, containing plenty of fruits and vegetables, oily fish and cereals can also help increase the chances of survival after a heart attack –, exercise 30 minutes or more each day and eat high-fibre foods to help lower your cholesterol level.