Know Your Heart Risk

When your doctor or practice nurse assesses your risk they look at what risk factors are issues for you. Taking all your individual risk factors into consideration allows your doctor or nurse to calculate your absolute cardiovascular risk. A cardiovascular risk assessment (Heart Health Check) is like putting all the pieces of a puzzle together, to see the whole picture of your risk.

What are the risks of heart disease and stroke?

The risks of heart disease are a combination of lifestyle factors you can change and ones that you can't like your age, ethnicity, family history and past medical issues. To know more about what the risks are read our  Risks and Causes page.

Find out what your heart risk is

Visit your doctor or practice nurse to have your life, health and history assesed to see which known risk factors apply to you. This is called a Heart Health Check. If you you know what your numbers are for blood cholesterol, blood pressure and your BMI you can use our online tool called Know Your Numbers. 

Small changes you can make to reduce your risk

• Quit smoking

• Exercise regularly (be active for at least 30 minutes a day)

• Replace saturated with unsaturated fats

• Eat a balanced and healthy diet

• Cut down on salt 

• Drink less alcohol  

• Keep within a healthy weight range (Check your BMI)