Most heart attacks from bad habits

The vast majority of heart attacks strike people who either smoke, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes, debunking the perception that heart problems can strike anyone, researchers said. ROUGHLY NINE OUT of 10 patients surveyed suffered from one of the four risk factors, often for years, before experiencing a heart problem, according to a pair of reports that analyzed accumulated data from previous studies.
The finding challenged claims repeated in medical literature that half of those who suffer heart-related events do not have any of the risk factors, said study author Dr. Philip Greenland of Northwestern University in Chicago.
Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Greenland found risk factors were present in 92 percent of men who suffered heart attacks, and 87 percent of the women. [read more at MSNBC]