After a first heart attack, the risk for a second heart attack rises. Learn how to use heart-healthy lifestyle changes to protect your heart.
Second Heart Attack: How to Reduce Your Risk
If you've had a heart attack, you're more likely to have another one, but it's not inevitable. In fact, you have the power to create a better future for your heart. From exercising more to eating a heart-healthy diet, the wholesome choices you make every day can help reduce the risk of a second heart attack.
Understanding the Risk of a Second Heart Attack
When a heart attack occurs, a blockage in an artery prevents blood from reaching an area of heart muscle. Lack of oxygen can damage the tissue beyond repair and cause a wide range of symptoms. These include chest pain, shortness of breath, extreme tiredness, nausea or vomiting, fainting, and pain in the jaw, neck, shoulders, back or arms.
Once you have one cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack, your risk of heart attacks in the future increases. Around one-fifth of people who've had a heart attack will end up back in the hospital due to a second heart attack within five years, according to the American Heart Association. A 2021 study of 6,626 patients who were hospitalized for a heart attack over a seven-year period found that 2.5% of them were readmitted within 90 days with a second heart attack. Almost half of those patients died within five years.
Second Thoughts: Tips to Improve Your Heart Health
After a cardiovascular event, your primary care provider or cardiologist will develop a plan to help you manage heart disease. Following this plan is one of the most helpful things you can do for your heart. Take your medications as prescribed and keep your follow-up appointments. These visits allow your healthcare provider to keep an eye on heart disease risk factors, such as high blood pressure and unhealthy cholesterol levels.
Your medical provider will also recommend lifestyle changes for preventing a second heart attack. These will include following a heart-healthy eating plan, such as the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, or DASH, diet. This diet calls for eating plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, along with lean sources of protein and fat-free or low-fat dairy products. Minimize foods high in sugar, sodium and saturated fat.
Regular exercise is also key to reducing your risk of a second heart attack. Slowly build up to participating in 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking, on most days of the week. Exercise and heart-healthy eating can help you reach and maintain a healthy weight. Losing weight is another way to help protect your heart.
Here are some additional steps you can take to support heart health:
How Cardiac Rehab Can Help You Avoid a Second Heart Attack
Understanding the lifestyle changes you need to make to protect your heart is one thing. Knowing how to get started is another. Eating for heart health, for example, can be difficult if you don't know how to read food labels. Additionally, the idea of exercising after a cardiovascular event may make you nervous. That's where cardiac rehabilitation comes in.
A program of monitored exercise and education, cardiac rehab will improve your endurance and teach you about the heart-healthy changes that can help you thrive. Cardiac rehab can reduce the chances of a second heart attack, boost your mood and self-confidence, and decrease chest pain.