Risk Factors

Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke

Risk factors are conditions or habits that increase your risk of developing a chest, heart and stroke condition. The good news is that many of these conditions can be reduced or prevented by making lifestyle changes and managing other medical risk factors such as high blood pressure, cholesterol and Atrial Fibrillation. 

However, other risk factors like family history, ethnicity and age cannot be changed.

Having Atrial Fibrillation (AF), high blood pressure or high cholesterol can increase your risk of having a stroke or heart attack.  But there are lifestyle changes you can make to reduce these medical risk factors, which in turn will reduce your risk of having a heart attack or stroke and improve your overall health and wellbeing.

Useful resources

The Heart Age Test tells you your heart age compared to your real age.
Use this tool to enter your blood pressure reading and find out what it means, along with information on how to reduce a high reading.