Are heart conditions hereditary? If so how much factors into my health?

Question

My Father has High BP and his mom had a triple bypass, and high bp and other stuff. How might this affect my chances of getting heart disease and what are other contributing factors? (besides smoking and birthcontrol pills, I don't do either of those). How important is weight for instance?

Answer 1

The weight question is very important to heart health. The heavier you are, the harder your heart has to work at circulating your blood, which is where high blood pressure comes in. In my family the men were prone to heart failures due to Aortic Dissections (tears in the main vein coming from the heart) and the Cardio study found that our family had a hereditary tendency that the men had hearts of horses but the veins of chickens. In other words, our plumbing sucked, making us prone to aortic tears, blockages and aneurysms. Your lifestyle plays a big part as to what will happen to you later in life, not smoking is the best. Smoking is like committing suicide..very slowly...one puff at a time.

Lose the weight and have a cardiologist check you out. Remember, worry about the things that you can control, for all other things beyond your control..you give them up to the Lord. Godspeed.

Answer 2

I am not a medical professional, but following my heart attack I have learned enough to give you a at least a partial answer.

Some heart conditions are not hereditary.

A few may be directly hereditary, but the most common heart problem, coronary artery disease (CAD) I would call indirectly hereditary. You do not inherit the disease, but you may inhereit characterisics that lead to the disease. The most obvious of these is a tendancy for high cholesterol.

High cholesterol can be controlled with proper exercise, keeping your weight in check, a diet low in fat (particularly saturated fat) and high in fiber, and, if necessary, medication.

Not smoking is probably the most important factor, but a lot of non-smokers have CAD and heart attacks so you still should have your cholesterol levels checked and discuss the results with your doctor.

Answer 3

What also seems hereditary, but is modifiable, is diet. My father and grandfather both had heart attacks at 57.

I have four siblings, none with heart disease. I shared my father's snack habits of cheese and crackers. He also did not eat a lot of fruit, and neither did I. Guess who got heart disease ?

Extra weight by itself makes your heart work harder to supply your larger body.

Improved diet, maintaining a healthy weight and following other standard advice of regular exercise, no smoking, reduced stress, no red meat or visible fats on meats, no processed foods with transfats, makes a huge difference in your heart disease risk.

I was good on all but the transfats and sufficient fruits. Yet I had mammoth blockages. Four decades of regular exercise gave me excellent collaterals which saved my life when my three primary arteries were 99%, 99%, and 80% blocked. With that discovery in an angiogram to find what was causing unstable angina, doctors did an emergency triple bypass the following morning.