February is American Heart Month, and Guthrie County Hospital Cardiac Rehab Manager Christine Drake says heart disease and the conditions that lead to it can happen at any age.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, half of all Americans have at least one of the top three risk factors for heart disease: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking. The most common type of heart disease is coronary artery, which is the main cause of heart attacks. Drake explains that not all heart attacks are apparent to those having them, “But chest pain or chest discomfort is just one of the signs and we really call it chest discomfort now instead of chest pain, because people perceive pain differently. So what might be painful to me may just be a little bit of an ache or something to you. So we ask people, ‘Are you having chest pressure? Are you feeling burning? Do you feel like there’s an elephant standing on your chest? Does it feel like it’s squeezing?’”

Other symptoms of a heart attack are weakness, light-headedness, nausea, cold sweat, pain or discomfort in the arms or shoulder, and shortness of breath. In order to prevent heart attacks brought on by heart disease, Drake urges people to get one hour of physical activity each day, eat a diet high in fruits and vegetables and low in sodium and added sugar, and manage conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol.