Is Heart Disease Hereditary?

Yes! You can inherit a predilection to heart disease but thankfully there are ways around the condition.  You may have a little more control over the situation than you think if you pay attention to your fitness.

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As an example, there is evidence that if your family has a history of coronary artery disease at an early age (younger than 55 in men and 65 in women), your risk of suffering heart disease is increased, with some sources suggesting that this single factor could represent up to 15% of your susceptibility to heart disease.

However you may be relieved or upset to hear that it is actually a combination of conditions that can play a far more important role in determining how healthy your heart remains.

For instance, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and cholesterol abnormalities are all factors which play an important role in determining whether you will suffer heart problems or not. If you bring diabetes onto yourself by living an unhealthy lifestyle then you very well might develop heart disease sooner than later than life.

It is for example widely recognized within medical circles that one of the reasons behind the explosion in childhood diabetes over the past two or three decades has been the vast increase in sugar intake.

For people who have a family history of diabetes however, there is no need for this massive sugar overdose for them to suffer the condition. It is a genetic thing rather than something that is caused by greed and overindulgence.

In many situations, there may therefore be an established link between illnesses and medical problems suffered by parents and the likelihood of their offspring suffering heart problems at some point.

If you know that one or both of your parents suffered diabetes and that your chances of suffering the condition are therefore increased, logic suggests that you have a superb early warning system in place.

You know that your chances of getting diabetes are higher than normal, you know that excessive sugar speeds the onset of diabetes and you are fully well aware that diabetes is a contributory factor to heart disease.

This is positive because you have a clear warning about the disease an idea of what you need to do in order to prevent the onset of diabetes and then the heart problems that usually follow it.

So, yes, there is an element of genetics involved in the likelihood of you contracting some form of heart disease or problem.

But once you know this you can use the information to help yourself avoid the entire ordeal of heart disease altogether.