Managing Chest Pain
In managing chest pain, modern treatments, along with healthy lifestyle choices, can greatly reduce your risk of further heart problems and relieve or control symptoms such as angina.
The most important things you can do to reduce your risk are:
- Take your medications as prescribed by your doctor
- Be smoke free
- Enjoy healthy eating
- Be physically active
- Control blood pressure
- Achieve and maintain a healthy body weight
- If you have diabetes, you should also aim to keep your blood glucose levels within the normal non-diabetic range. Regular diabetes reviews with your doctor can help you achieve this.
Cardiac rehabilitation
The Heart Foundation and the World Health Organization recommend that all those who have had a heart attack, heart surgery, coronary angioplasty, angina or other heart or blood vessel disease are routinely referred to an appropriate cardiac rehabilitation and prevention program.
These programs are designed to help you make practical, potentially life-saving changes to the way you live. They can provide you and your family with education, information, physical activity programs and support, which can complement the help you receive from your GP and/or cardiologist.