By making changes in your lifestyle, you can reduce your risk for heart disease. Controllable risk factors for heart disease include: Smoking. High LDL, or "bad" cholesterol, and low HDL, or "good" cholesterol.
There are five important heart disease risk factors that you can control. A poor diet, high blood pressure and cholesterol, stress, smoking and obesity are factors shaped by your lifestyle and can be improved through behavior modifications. Risk factors that cannot be controlled include family history, age and gender.