Heart Disease Risk Factor Assessment Essay

After completing our lab for this unit, I learned I have an average rating for the risk of heart disease (Corbin, C., Welk, G., Corbin, W., & Welk, K., 2006). I came to this conclusion by completing the heart disease risk factor assessment. First, I answered questions about unalterable factors in my life. These factors are things I cannot change such as my age or hereditary conditions like a history of heart disease in my family. I am thirty-four years old, so I scored myself two points for question one. Next, I do not have a history of heart disease in my family, so I was able to give myself the lowest score here which was one point. Unfortunately, for the last question in the unalterable factors category, I am a male, scoring three more points.

The sole source of my stress is my career. I arrive at this conclusion because I am single, I do not have any children, and do not have any health or money issues. I feel stress at work when I become overwhelmed when a bunch of problems presents themselves simultaneously. I constantly feel the need to perform above expectations. In order to reduce my risk of heart disease by lowering my stress level, I plan to perform breathing exercises. Deep breathing is a way to lower stress because it sends a calming message to the brain (Healthwise Staff, 2014). I plan to research different breathing and stress reduction techniques and implement them into my professional

I have smoked cigarettes for over fifteen years. Recently, I have cut back on my tobacco use, and I plan to quit altogether. By quitting smoking, reducing the amount of stress I feel, and making some alterations to my diet, I can significantly reduce my risk of heart disease. In fact, by making these changes, I can lower my alterable risk score from fifteen points which is considered to be at high risk of heart disease, to seven points, which is considered to be at low risk. Moreover, these changes would drop my total score from twenty-one points to just thirteen points, putting me at the low end of the spectrum for heart