Cause of Heart Disease not always heredity

If your parents had heart disease, and your grandparents before them, you might feel destined to heart failure. While it is true that heredity is a cause of heart disease, it is not necessarily even the most important cause. One recent study even says that heart disease from heredity accounts for less than 10% of a person’s risk of developing heart disease.

So, what are the other 90% of Heart Disease causes?

Physicians don't agree on any number one cause of heart disease, but naturally smoking, being over weight, and high cholesterol are right up top among causes of heart disease.

The chemicals in cigarettes will damage blood vessel walls, and make it easier for cholesterol deposits to build an unhealthy, blood-blocking residence in the body. Smoking also makes platelets, the component of blood that causes clotting, to be more active, and hence the risk of a killer clot rises.

A body needs cholesterol and can actually produce all it needs, so when we ingest foods high in cholesterols, like dairy and meat products, our bodies get a lot more cholesterol than they need. The body saves cholesterol instead of excreting it, and that cholesterol gets stored along the walls of the arteries. Too many cholesterol deposits lead to artery blockage and clots.

High Blood Pressure is also a major cause of heart disease

High blood pressure is also a major cause of heart disease. Imagine this, your arteries are narrowed because of all that cholesterol stored in there, yet your body is the same size and needs the same amount of blood; so your heart is trying to pump a lot of blood through a passage that is getting too small. Just as the motor of an air conditioner can get worn out trying to push air through a filter that no one has cleaned, your heart can overtax itself trying to force blood through blocked passages.

Obesity, not just because of all the health problems that come with it, is another cause of heart disease. Often obesity comes with high cholesterol and blood pressure, which we know increase 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 increase more.

Also, stress causes an overall decline in health and is particularly associated with heart disease. So, unless your parents are stressing you out enough to cause a heart attack, they are not the cause of heart disease.

Heart Disease can be controlled.

Congenital Heart Disease