Five steps to a healthy heart

For a similar happy ending, Dr Brian Maurer, medical director of the Irish Heart Foundation, suggests people make five changes in their lives:

•  First, don't smoke and if you do smoke, stop. It's never too late, a year later you will be back to baseline health.

•  Two, do whatever exercise you enjoy to keep active.

•  Third, don't put on weight, stay as you are with a healthy diet, with nothing forbidden and nothing to excess.

•  Four, don't eat salt.

•  Five, reduce unnecessary stress which has become an artificial condition of modern life.

"Finally on the day that's in it, there is a lot of evidence out there that a loving, affectionate and stable relationship is a wonderful way of keeping healthy," he says.