Lifestyle strategies for cardiovascular risk reduction.

Daily lifestyle practices and habits profoundly affect the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). Abundant research and multiple recent consensus documents support the role of regular physical activity, not smoking cigarettes, maintaining a healthy body weight, controlling cholesterol levels, and controlling blood pressure to lower the risk of CVD. These strategies also play important roles in avoiding ever developing risk factors. Despite overwhelming knowledge in this area, adherence to lifestyle strategies remains suboptimal. Challenges remain in helping the public to act upon the current knowledge in this area. Recent guidelines for managing cholesterol and blood pressure provide new guidance in these areas. Controversy, however, exists related to specific recommendations in both of these areas. Similar strategies that are applied to adults for improving lifestyle habits and practices to lower CVD risk also apply to children and adolescents. A clear consensus exists that lifestyle strategies play a critical role in preventing, managing, and reducing cardiovascular disease and its risk factors.