Daily HealthBeat Tip

Heading off trouble

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Wait for signs of trouble and you may get trouble. People with risk factors for diseases such as heart attack at age 50 are more likely to wind up sick.

Risk factors include overweight, inactivity, smoking, diabetes, or elevated cholesterol or blood pressure. Donald Lloyd-Jones of Northwestern University says a man with two or more risk factors has about a 70 percent chance of cardiovascular disease. For women, it�s about 50 percent.

"In addition to that, their lifespans were about 10 years shorter than people who did not have any of those elevated risk factors at age 50." (eight seconds)

Lloyd-Jones bases that on people in the Framingham Heart Study, supported by the National Institutes of Health. His study is in the journal Circulation.

Lloyd-Jones says people should avoid even signs of trouble � low risk factors can lead to low risk.

Last revised: May 19, 2006

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