Most of the articles that we have published on the BAM! site that are related to your health and well being talk about the things that you can do to change and improve your health and your life. Because if you can do something to better your life, why wouldn’t you?
But there are some aspects to our lives that we have little or no control over. This can be especially true when we speak about our bodies and congenital issues that we may face. Our heredity can have a part in our health and it would be remiss of us if we did not make mention of this on our site.
Why is it that people can have a healthy lifestyle, eat well, and exercise regularly but still develop heart disease? Scientists and doctors believe that not only is heart disease linked to your health choices, it is also linked to your genetics and family history. According to the National Institutes for Health, a family history of heart disease is one of the six major risk factors for developing the disease.
Heredity
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) explains heredity as the passing of traits from one generation to the next. Unfortunately, these traits can include the risk for heart disease and other risk factors of heart disease, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Parents pass a combination of their genes to their children, which transfers physical traits like eye color, height, and freckles. But heredity also passes fewer desirable traits like the risk of health conditions and diseases.
How Much Family History Is Important?
Your doctor can help you determine your risk for heart disease based on your family history. The American Heart Association suggests starting with your immediate relatives, including your parents and siblings. Let your doctor know if any of these relatives have been diagnosed with heart disease or had a heart attack or stroke.
It can also be helpful to know if either of your grandparents had heart disease. However, doctors at Harvard Health state that your grandparents may have led a different type of lifestyle or been exposed to different environmental factors than your parents. While knowing if your grandparents had heart disease is not as essential as knowing your immediate family history, you may still be at risk if your grandparents diet young from heart disease, even if your parents did not.
Other Genetic Factors
You should talk with your doctor about other risk factors for heart disease in your family history. A recent study by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the German Heart Center Munich, AstraZeneca, and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed that more than 30% of heart disease risk comes from hereditary factors.
According to the Ottawa Heart Institute, heredity contributes to these risk factors for heart disease:
- Irregular heart rate
- Congenital heart disease
- Cardiomyopathy
- High cholesterol
- High blood pressure
- Coronary artery disease
- Diabetes
An irregular heart rate, or arrhythmia, increases a person’s risk for stroke because the irregular rate disrupts blood flow, which can lead to blood pooling in the arteries and clot formation. Congenital heart disease is a type of birth defect of the structure of the heart. Cardiomyopathy is a disease of the heart muscle that weakens it and makes it hard for the heart to pump blood effectively.
High cholesterol and high blood pressure both damage arteries and can lead to coronary or heart disease. Diabetes is known to be a risk factor for heart disease because excess sugar molecules in the blood can damage the blood vessels.
Family History And Environment
The doctors at Harvard Health state that family history and the risk for heart disease is complex because of environmental factors associated with family history. As you were raised, you most likely participated in the same environmental risks that your family had. These risks are more social, economic, and lifestyle-related than heredity, but they are still a part of your family history.
Environmental family history risk factors include growing up in a household with:
- Smoking
- Unhealthy diet
- Location
- Exposure to harmful chemicals
If your family smoked or ate a lot of processed, fast food, you are more likely to have developed these unhealthy habits. Where your family lived may have affected your expose to air pollution and other harmful chemicals. People who grew up in the city may have experienced more carbon monoxide and other air pollution or lived in a home with lead paint and toxic cleaning chemicals.
Conclusion
Heart disease is related to family history, both through heredity and family environment. Talk to your doctor about your risk factor for heart disease based on the health of your immediate family and grandparents.
Even if there are somethings that can affect our health that are out of our control, such as certain physical attributes that we may inherit from our parents, knowing that they are there can help us to make choices in our life that can, at least, minimize the effects of them.
When it comes to our bodies and our health and wellbeing the more that we know the better choices that we can make to make our lives as good as possible.
So yes, there are aspects of our life that we may have no control over, but being aware of them will allow us to choose to take the steps that we can do something about.
As we like to say here on the BAM! site, knowledge when used and applied is power.
Know your family medical history, especially when it comes to your body, your health and your heart health and then do the right things that you need to do with that knowledge.
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