While regular exercise and a healthy diet come a long way in ensuring that your heart remains healthy, taking care of these 4 additional things can greatly reduce the risk of heart disease. Replace trans fats with healthy fats: Industry-produced fats found in packaged goods, snacks and fried fast foods contain a lot of trans fats. While the human body requires saturated, poly-saturated and unsaturated fats, trans fats only clog the arteries by raising bad cholesterol levels (LDL) and lowering good cholesterol levels (HDL).