The next time you go in for a checkup, in addition to checking your blood pressure and other cardiac risk factors, your doctor should ask how much you exercise.

That new recommendation from the American Heart Association (AHA) is because “physical inactivity is about as bad for you as smoking,” says Scott Stratch, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s College of Health Sciences.

Heart disease causes one in four deaths among men in the United States, but you don't have to be one of them. If you have been diagnosed with heart disease, there are things you can do today to lower your risk.

Controlling your high blood pressure and high cholesterol may cut your risk for heart disease by half or more, yet fewer than one in three people are doing it, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.