Do you want to avoid heart attack? See how!

Do you want to avoid heart attack? A 20-year study was conducted. It tracked the lifestyle habits of almost 70000 female nurses and found six behaviours that can reduce the risk of heart disease by 92%.

The US women least likely to have a heart attack engaged in two-and-a-half hours of moderate to vigorous exercise a week, did not smoke, watched television for seven hours or fewer a week and had a healthy weight, equal to a body mass index of between 18 and 25.

Happily, women who had small amounts of alcohol - about a drink a day - did better than those who did not drink. Too much alcohol was a risk factor for developing heart diseases.

Women who did not get heart attacks or develop diabetes ate a healthy diet similar to the "healthy eating pyramid" designed by Harvard University's school of public health nutrition programme.

The Harvard diet recommends eating very little red and processed meat, and having small amounts of sugar, sugary drinks and salt.

White bread, rice, pasta and potatoes should be eaten in limited quantities. The staple foods of the diet are vegetables, fruit and high-fibre whole grains such as brown rice and oats.

Cheese, low-fat dairy and poultry and fish are also recommended.

"Mortality rates from heart disease in the US have been in decline for the last four decades, but women aged 35 to 44 have not experienced the same reduction," said Andrea K Chomistek, the study's lead author and a researcher at Indiana University in the US.

After two decades of research, scientists concluded that three-quarters of heart attacks could be prevented if women lived healthily.

Over the 20 years, 456 of the 70000 women had heart attacks.

But 31691 were diagnosed with a risk factor for heart disease including diabetes, high blood pressure and high LDL cholesterol.

Women with risk factors could prevent heart attacks by following at least four of the six lifestyle factors, the study said.

The average age at which heart attacks occurred was 50.