Avoid heart disease
It is one thing when the terrified survivor of a serious heart attack, still wearing his hospital gown, receives a stern lecture about the health habits he needs to modify and what will likely happen if he does not.
It is quite another to attempt such changes in a fairly ordinary middle-aged person without symptoms of disease. Why wait until AFTER you have the heart attack to make changes?
According to the American Heart Association, about 62 million Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease, which can include high blood pressure, coronary heart disease (heart attack and chest pain), stroke, birth defects of the heart and blood vessels, and congestive heart failure, and close to a million die from such conditions every year.