In addition to managing your diet and exercising regularly, you can take additional steps to reduce your controllable risk factors for heart disease, peripheral vascular disease and stroke.

Stress management
When you're under stress, your body produces chemicals that cause your heart to pump faster and harder. While occasional stress is normal, long-term, prolonged stress raises your blood pressure. While you may not be able to control all types of stress, such as work-related deadlines, you can manage the way you react to stressful events. Some tips to manage your stress include:

• Exercise regularly (Exercise is a proven-stress reliever.)
• Learn stress-relieving techniques like meditation or yoga
• Share your stress and discuss your concerns, rather than bottling-up your feelings
• Learn to prioritize your goals and concerns
• Practice positive thinking
• Ask your physician to refer you to stress counseling
• Setup a plan to rid yourself of financial debt that causes stress

Tobacco All forms of tobacco, including cigarettes ('low-tar' and 'low-nicotine' cigarettes too), cigars, pipes and smokeless chewing tobacco are dangerous. They dramatically increase your risk for heart disease, as well as other illnesses such as cancer, peripheral vascular disease and stroke. Every time you use tobacco, your blood vessels constrict, which raises blood pressure and makes the heart work harder. In addition, the smoke itself damages the protective lining of the arteries, which can lead to coronary artery disease. For this reason, second-hand smoke is also dangerous, so in addition to not smoking, you should limit or avoid exposure to second-hand smoke.

If you don't smoke, don't start. If you do smoke, quit. Ask your physician if nicotine replacement products and/or other medication can safely help you. Also, consider joining a support group to help you quit. Finally, if you're unsuccessful the first time you try to quit, don't be discouraged. Most former-smokers took more than one try to permanently kick the habit.

Alcohol
Alcoholic beverages, including wine, beer and hard liquor can depress heart function. They're also packed with calories. If you're diagnosed with a heart condition, especially coronary artery disease, you should minimize alcohol ingestion.

As a general rule, even healthy persons should limit their alcohol intake to one to two ounces per day. In addition, because beer is especially high in carbohydrates and calories, wine is generally a better choice. In recent years, studies have shown that regularly drinking small amounts of red wine, which is high in antioxidants, is beneficial for the heart.