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Cardiovascular disease

What is cardiovascular disease?
Coronary heart disease
More treatments
Other issues
Prevention of CVD
Lifestyle changes
Assessment questions

module menu icon Prevention of CVD

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module menu icon Prevention of CVD

The risk of CVD developing can be reduced by adopting changes to lifestyle. Factors to consider include:

Smoking cessation

Advise smokers to access smoking cessation services. This is an opportunity to signpost patients to an NHS Stop Smoking scheme, which may be offered at the pharmacy.

Weight loss

Body mass index is used to measure obesity. Advise overweight patients to lose weight in order to reduce their cardiovascular risk. This tends to be a sensitive subject with some patients, so a careful approach is required. Pharmacy weight management services can support patients with this and provide the encouragement and support needed to achieve their goals.

Healthy diet

Adopting a healthy diet will help to reduce CVD risk. Advise patients to:

  • Reduce their intake of saturated fats, found mainly from animal sources (reduce to less than seven per cent)
  • Eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables per day
  • Eat at least two portions of fish per week, one of which should be oily fish
  • Eat at least four to five portions per week of unsalted mixed nuts and seeds (30g portion)
  • Reduce salt intake to less than 6g per day. Minimise the salt added to foods and processed foods which have a high salt content
  • Use olive oil rather than butter.

    • Cardiovascular disease

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