The Cause of Heart Disease isn't Your Parents
If your mother and your father had heart disease, and their parents prior to them, you may feel doomed to heart failure. Whilst it is correct that heredity is a cause of heart disease, it is only a facet among many others. One recent study even says heredity accounts for less than 10% of the risk of developing heart disease.
Really, What is the Other 90%?
Doctors don't agree on the number one cause of heart disease, but smoking, obesity, and high cholesterol are the front runners in any study.
The chemicals in cigarettes weaken artery walls, making it much easier for cholesterol deposits to build an unhealthy, blood-blocking home in the body. Smoking also makes platelets, the component of blood that makes clotting, to be even more active, and hence the risk of a killer clot rises.
A body needs cholesterol and can clearly make all it needs, so as we ingest foods high in cholesterols, such as dairy and meat products, our bodies get a lot greater cholesterol than they need. The body saves cholesterol instead of excreting it, and this cholesterol gets put aside along the walls of the arteries. Too many cholesterol deposits can lead to artery blockage
and clots.
High blood pressure is also a major factor in heart disease. Imagine this, your arteries are narrowed due to all that cholesterol stored in there, yet your body is the same size and needs the same amount of blood; really your heart is trying to pump a lot of blood through a passage that is much too small. Just as the motor of an air conditioner can get worn out trying to push air out through a filter that no one has cleaned, your heart can overtax itself trying to force blood all through blocked passages.
Obesity, not just because of all the health problems that come with it, is a supplemental cause of heart disease. Many a time obesity comes with high cholesterol and blood pressure, which we know increases the risk of heart disease, but new studies are also showing a correlation between abdominal fat and heart disease in a way that is not yet fully understood. Either way, as the circumference of stomach increases, the risk of heart disease seems to raise further too.
Also, tension creates an overall decline in health and is principally associated with heart disease. So, unless your parents are stressing you out enough to create a heart attack, they aren't the cause of your heart disease.
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