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Your guide to a healthy heart

Our advice on preventing, diagnosing, and treating heart disease

Published: February 2013

This guide provides comprehensive advice on heart heatlh. We describe the screening tests you need, and provide a calculator that can estimate your risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years.

We outline steps you can take to protect your heart by, for example, lowering your blood pressure and controling cholesterol levels.

We also describe the signs of a heart attack and heart disease, and the tests you need to diagnose heart problems.

If you already have heart disease, we describe when drugs and lifestyle changes are enough, and when surgical intereventions are required.

Finally, if you need surgery, we have Ratings of bypass surgery groups across the country to help you find a good one near you.

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Control risk factors

Get the right screening tests
Lower your blood pressure
Improve your cholesterol
Control your blood sugar
Tame inflammation
Ratings of heart screening tests
What's behind our Ratings of heart screening tests
Heart attack risk calculator

Make lifestyle changes

Lose weight
Stay active
Eat a heart-healthy diet
Stop smoking
Consider low-dose aspirin
Manage stress
Control snoring

Recognize and treat heart disease

Is it a heart attack?
Diagnosing heart disease
Treating heart disease
Treating heart failure
Ratings of heart surgeons
What's behind our Ratings of heart surgeons?
Best Buy Drug reports on heart drugs