If your parents had heart disease at an early age, or any of the associated risk factors of heart disease diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol then you are at risk of developing these diseases as well.
A heart attack before the age of 45 in a man or 55 in a woman is an unusual event though not nearly unusual enough. If your mother or father had one, then that increases the chance that you will develop heart disease as well. How much that risk is increased isn’t known, but a family history of heart disease at an early age is a signal that risk factors should be screened for and well-controlled to reduce that risk as much as possible.
If one of your parents had diabetes, then you are also at risk of developing diabetes. Fortunately, being at risk doesn’t mean you will it means you could. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2002 showed that even people at very high risk of developing diabetes those with insulin resistance could prevent that by losing some weight and exercising. The participants in this study lost 7 per cent of their initial body weight over the course of 6 months and kept most of that off. Losing that much weight prevented most of them from developing diabetes. People in the study were asked to engage in moderate exercise (they sweat lightly but were still able to talk) for 150 minutes a week, just over 20 minutes a day.
If you have a family history of diabetes, you can dramatically reduce your risk of developing diabetes as well by maintaining a healthy weight and exercising daily. When I talk about diabetes, I am talking about what is called adult onset diabetes, or type 2 diabetes, which can be treated with pills as well as insulin. The other type of diabetes juvenile, or type 1, diabetes must always be treated with insulin, and does not run in families.
What about high blood pressure? All of us are at risk of developing high blood pressure eventually. Half of everyone over the age of 60 has it. If either of your parents have high blood pressure then you too are at a higher risk of developing it as well. What can you do to reduce or prevent it? The answers are probably what you would expect.
1. Lose weight. In one study an average weight loss of just 3.6kg (Bib) cut the risk of developing high blood pressure in half.
2. Reduce salt intake. Researchers found that cutting salt to less than 6 grams per day dropped blood pressure by an average of 3 mm Hg. That may not sound like much to you, but in one long-term population study, a 2 mm Hg drop in blood pressure reduced the risk of developing high blood pressure by 20 per cent.
3. Exercise. Moderate exercise done 30 minutes per day, most days of the week, will reduce blood pressure by 4 mm Hg.
4. Reduce your alcohol intake. A number of studies have shown that reducing alcohol intake to no more than two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women lowered blood pressure by 4 mm Hg.
5. Eat a diet high in potassium. Eating bananas, oranges or leafy greens daily was associated with a 2 mm Hg drop in blood pressure.
6. Eat a diet rich in fruits, fresh vegetables and low-fat dairy products and low in saturated fats. This diet was associated with a 4 mm Hg drop in blood pressure. Finally, what about cholesterol? If you have a family history of high cholesterol, then you may be at risk of high cholesterol yourself. Obviously, diet is a major contributor in the development of high cholesterol, but your genes speak here as well. It is advisable for all adults aged 20 or over to have their cholesterol measured.
This is a much younger age at which to start screening than was previously recommended, so if you are under the age of 40, you may not have had your cholesterol checked. You should discuss this with your doctor and see if she wants to measure it now.
Certainly if you have a family history of high cholesterol or early heart disease or if you have diabetes, you should seriously consider having your cholesterol checked at regular intervals.
Your risk of developing high cholesterol if you have a family history of it isn’t clear at this point. But even if you don’t have high cholesterol now, you should certainly consider eating a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol in that setting. Diet alone can bring down cholesterol 10 to 15 per cent on average, and that may be all you really need at this point.
