Heart Health: Genetics or Lifetstyle?

I believe that diet and lifestyle have a more profound impact on someone's heart healthiness than genetics does. While it is undeniable that genetics may play a role in heart problems, I think that it should be stated that a family history of heart disease does not necessarily mean that the heart problems were genetic at all. Families have patterns, and often times the habits of our parents become habits of our own. Unhealthy legacies may lead us to heart problems.

Some people talk about the fact that they are genetically predisposed to heart disease because they know that so many generations in their wake have died due to heart attacks or other heart-related issues. However, what these individuals may not be taking into careful enough consideration is whether there were patterns OTHER THAN heart attacks that may have led to the deaths. For example, were all of these individuals overweight? Did they smoke? Did they have very laborious jobs? Did they have trouble dealing with stress? Did they engage in regular cardiovascular activity and exercise? Did their diet consist of unhealthy foods, laden in saturated fats? If the answer to any (or in some cases, all) of these questions is yes, then it seems very possible that this "genetic curse" could easily be broken by breaking the unhealthy cycle and adapting a more healthy, heart-conscious lifestyle.

Many young people who are smokers or who are overweight (by the way, about a year ago I was more than fifty pounds over weight and I was smoking a pack a day - now I'm about ten pounds overweight and I'm still smoking, so I'm not passing judgment here - I am just making some candid observations) think they for some reason are not old enough to be susceptible to heart conditions and problems. This is a big problem, and it is one that is very hard to overcome because, plain and simple, there is just no way at all to convince most young people that they are in fact not invincible. If you have high cholesterol in your twenties, you're probably going to have higher cholesterol in your thirties and so on, especially if you continue living the lifestyle that you are as a twenty-something with high cholesterol. It's hard to break habits - especially habits that aren't even just your own personal habits, but also the habits that have been forged over the generational limbs of your family tree. However, the cycle will keep on recycling itself until someone decides to get rid of the bad habits once and for all.