You probably know the standard advice about preventing heart disease: Maintain a healthy weight, exercise regularly, eat a balanced diet, and don’t smoke. These factors are undeniably important, but did you know they're not the complete picture?
Kunal Patel, MD, and our team at NJ Cardiovascular Institute specialize in heart disease care in Elizabeth, Lakewood, Paramus, and Secaucus, New Jersey. Beyond the well-known risk factors for heart disease, other things can impact your heart health, too, even if you're doing everything “right” with diet and exercise.
Here are seven surprising risk factors for heart disease.
It’s easy to assume that loneliness is just an emotional concern, but social isolation can increase your risk of heart disease and other cardiovascular complications. When you lack meaningful social connections, your body experiences chronic stress that elevates inflammation and raises blood pressure, which damages your cardiovascular system.
Loneliness affects your health behaviors, too. You may be less motivated to exercise, more likely to eat poorly, and less adherent to medical recommendations when you lack social support. The cardiovascular impact of isolation rivals traditional risk factors like obesity and physical inactivity, yet it receives far less attention in preventive care discussions.
Your body needs sleep to function at its best — and consistently sleeping less than six hours per night increases your heart disease risk. Sleep apnea, which causes your breathing to repeatedly stop during sleep, raises your risk even more dramatically by causing oxygen deprivation, blood pressure spikes, and irregular heart rhythms throughout the night.
Almost half of American adults have gum disease, but what many don’t know is that poor oral health also contributes to poor heart health. Periodontal disease can increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular events because the bacteria that cause gum inflammation can trigger a system-wide inflammatory response.
Chronic inflammation contributes to arterial plaque formation and accelerates atherosclerosis, but regular dental care, proper brushing and flossing, and prompt treatment of gum disease protect both your smile and your heart.
Stress might seem like a normal part of modern life, but it can have a serious effect on your heart health. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, when constantly elevated, damage blood vessels, raise blood pressure, increase heart rate, promote dangerous belly fat accumulation, and encourage unhealthy coping behaviors like emotional eating or alcohol use.
Your mental health isn't separate from your physical health, and other mental health conditions can increase your cardiovascular risk. Depression increases your risk of cardiovascular disease, and anxiety disorders also raise your risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death.
You can't see it, but the air you breathe significantly impacts your heart health. Long-term exposure to air pollution, even at levels considered acceptable by current standards, increases your risk of heart attack, stroke, and heart failure.
Fine particulate matter from vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions, and wildfires enters your bloodstream through your lungs, triggering inflammation and oxidative stress in your cardiovascular system. While you can't completely avoid environmental pollution, reducing your exposure can make a big difference for your health.
Autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and psoriasis can dramatically increase your heart disease risk. Such diseases create chronic system-wide inflammation that damages blood vessels and accelerates atherosclerosis. People with rheumatoid arthritis, for instance, have nearly double the cardiovascular risk of the general population.
This happens because the inflammation driving your autoimmune condition doesn't stay localized — it affects your entire vascular system. If you have an autoimmune disorder, proactive management, regular cardiovascular screening, and close attention to other risk factors become especially important.
Women who start menopause before age 45 face significantly elevated heart disease risk throughout the rest of their life. Estrogen is a female hormone that provides protective cardiovascular effects. When estrogen levels drop during early menopause, you lose those benefits sooner — and that leaves you more vulnerable to heart disease longer.
Pregnancy complications can also affect your risk of heart disease. Conditions like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, or preterm delivery can reveal underlying cardiovascular vulnerabilities. Women who experience these complications have two to seven times higher lifetime risk of heart disease, but these warnings are often forgotten once pregnancy ends.
These risk factors can sound daunting, but the good news is that you don’t have to do it alone. Dr. Patel and our team specialize in comprehensive evaluations to assess your risk and personalized care plans to address your needs in a way that fits your lifestyle.
Ready to get a better understanding of your heart disease risk? Contact us to book your appointment.
