MUNICH (Reuters) - Virtually the entire risk of heart attack can be predicted and the impact of factors causing attacks is the same whether you live in a rich country or a poor one, a global study released Sunday showed.
Results of the study of more than 29,000 people in 52 countries, released at a meeting of the European Cardiology Society, showed that two factors alone -- an abnormal ratio of bad to good cholesterol and smoking -- were responsible for two-thirds of the global risk of heart attack.
Other risk factors were high blood pressure, diabetes, abdominal obesity, stress, a lack of daily consumption of fruits and vegetables, and lack of daily exercise.
Drinking small amounts of alcohol regularly was found to reduce risk slightly.
"This convincingly shows that 90 percent of the global risk of heart disease is predictable," researcher Salim Yusuf, a professor of medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, told a news conference.
It is kind of crazy to think about how many things people knowingly do that are unhealthy for them. Is it denial or something else that makes us ignore what should be common sense. Maybe it is because there are so many exceptions to the rule.
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They have found recently that many people w/cholesterol problems never develop coronary artery disease and there have been some fascinating studies about why they don't develop heart problems, in spite of bad cholesterol ratios.
They are starting to see a correlation between C-Reactive Protein levels in the blood and heart attacks/heart disease. It is a whole new way of looking at heart disease and cardiologists are beginning to look at this and inflammation in conjunction w/cholesterol as the culprits.
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