What Are Coronary Artery Disease Risk Factors?

Dr. Kahlon:
Factors that lead to coronary artery disease and death in women are mostly based on the risk profile of a patient. The risk profile of the patient is most importantly determined by their lineage, their heredity.

So if their parents developed heart disease or their siblings have heart disease then chances of them having coronary disease, and I am using the word heart disease, coronary disease in an interchangeable fashion but the coronary disease risk is elevated, but heredity alone does not determine that you will get heart disease; it just determines a likelihood that you are more likely to get heart disease.

There are additional environmental factors or co-existent genetic factors which will make it more likely for you to get heart disease which could include, if you have presence of high blood pressure, if you have elevated cholesterol levels and very important for women, diabetes.

Diabetes significantly affects your risk of getting heart disease and presence of any other injurious behaviors including smoking or using other recreational drugs like cocaine – they are all likely to increase your risk of getting heart disease.

Women have a protection from heart disease compared to men because they present roughly ten years later than men in age of onset, but that protection is removed if they are diabetic or if they smoke.

So a smoker patient or especially a female who is diabetic and smokes and has family history of heart disease is very likely to get heart disease if she does not change the behavior of smoking and she does not optimally treat and take control of her diabetes and all these diabetes, hypertension and family history are kind of intermingled with each other through the weight gain process.

So if there’s a person with a weight distribution which looks more like an apple as opposed to a pear, they have a central body fat, they are more likely to get a heart disease. So your waist to hip ratio is very important and you can go to any chart on Internet and look to your waist to hip ratio and you will know what your ideal waist to hip ratio should be an if you are higher then your risk of heart disease is much higher than people who have normal waist to hip ratio.

So total body weight is important, but waist to hip ratio is a very important determinant of the weight distribution which also predisposes you to get heart disease because you are genetically marked for having heart disease in distribution of your fat.

About Dr. Jaskamal Kahlon, M.D.:
Dr. Jaskamal Kahlon is Board Certified in Cardiovascular Diseases, Echocardiography, Interventional Cardiology and Internal Medicine. He completed his Fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine and Internal Medicine Residency at the St. John Hospital and Medical Center, Fellowship in Interventional Cardiology at Emory University and his Residency in Cardiology.

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• Coronary Artery Disease