Heart Disease - Lifestyle vs Heredity

[KillSwitch]

We know CAD is a lifestyle (dietary) disease. Here is my question. Do you have a parent, grandparent, or some other loved one (uncle, aunt, brother, sister, etc) who suffers from this disease but you have thus far avoided the same fate by adopting this healthier way of eating? What was the age of the loved one when they became sick? Is this person still alive? If yes, are they doing ok or still sick with the disease bc they have not changed their WOE.

Thanks--

[Mom+Me]

KillSwitch, welcome to the Board and this is a verrry good question!

I am still too young to see what my fate will be, as all family members with health problems were older than I am now when they were diagnosed and/or had events.

As a famous saying goes, "Heredity loads the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger.". It is my hope and prayer that by following this WOE, the proverbial gun will not fire for me.

[dynodan62]

I assume hypercholesterolemia is hereditary (?). (I have to laugh whenever my physician asks if there is history of CVD in my family, but never asks about my diet).
I also assume that dietary choices are traditional among family members. If you grow up where a lot of meat/dairy/oil are served at large family gatherings, then ‘nurture’ likely outweighs ‘nature’ when it comes to your susceptibility to vascular disease.

[Lyndzie]

I think most people end up here after the heart attack, not before.

I made changes after watching my mom have a heart attack when she was 59. I’m 38 now, so I have a few more years to go before I find out.

[KillSwitch]

Thanks Lyndzie and Mom+Me. I wish I had begun this WOE 2 decades earlier but hindsight is 20/20 as they say. Do either of you have kids and are you trying to influence your kids the importance of eating this way? That is really hard in today's world. In the end tho, we only have control over our own lives. I even tried talking to my almost 80 year old mother awhile back but she is convinced it is just too late for her. I don't think it is ever too late as long as there's still life.

[Lyndzie]

Have you seen the recent interview of Heather McDougall? She is a great example of how to parent. My rules are similar to hers regarding my children (my kids are vegetarian, but we don’t keep dairy in the house, and I don’t cook with oil. I always joke that I can’t control what happens at grandma’s house). Heather has the added bonus of also being raised this way so she can speak to that experience as well.

Here is the interview of Heather McDougall.

Also, don’t worry to much about the moms. Mine had the heart attack but didn’t change a thing. Just lead by example and hope for the best.

[bunsofaluminum]

In my family, on my mom's side, widow maker heart attacks are a thing. My grandpa (her father) and my uncle (her brother) both dropped dead of cardiac arrest in their mid 50's. They also smoked and drank. My mom and the other uncle no smoking and just an occasional cocktail or glass of wine. And also no sudden cardiac arrest, right?

My numbers have always been normal. I've had full blood panels done a few times for different reasons and never had any alarmingly high or low numbers. My brother, either. My brother and I are both obese, and we both used to smoke. I eat this way, and my bro eats a slightly modified "nothing white" type diet...low on processed, but high in animal protein. He's dropped 30 pounds in the past year just by cutting pasta and sweets

And then there's my sister. She had a blood panel done to check her estrogen levels, and they discovered an unusually high LDL. She has familial hypercholesterolemia and has in fact had a myocardial infarction, undetected until her EKG, which she had done when they discovered her alarming cholesterol numbers.

Here's the thing though: My sister's lifestyle is almost the exact opposite of typical for people w. heart disease. She is trim, with maybe 18% body fat; athletic, having won triathlons throughout her 20's and 30's and still goes for a run almost every morning, and keeps active with outdoor activities in all seasons; eats whole food omnivore and never overeats. She has never smoked in her life, and also doesn't abuse alcohol or other substances. She has taken good care of herself physically her whole entire life. And she got the gene AND she has the heart disease. She has eaten ovo-lacto vegetarian in the past, for over 10 years and got her body fat percentage into the low teens. She ate meat again for the past 15ish years, but this past year came back to veganism, but didn't at first drop the added fats.

I sent her Esselstyn's book "Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease" and she read it! and tells me that she's been able to drop refined fats, but still enjoys the occasional avocado. I'd love to see what her numbers are after following this WOE for six months. But this also makes me think of the bloodwork I had done in 2014...my cholesterol was just one point above the normal range, and I was eating 100% clean McDougall at the time. also as fit as I've ever been in my life. However, I had another lab done in 2020, just a general check up, and back to all normal everything so...and my eating and fitness haven't been what they were in 2013 and 2014.

Anyway. If you ask me, familial hypercholesterolemia is primarily a genetic thing and maybe not much influenced by lifestyle. HOWEVER...looking at both sides. What would my sister's health have been like all these years if she hadn't been the active, athletic type? And, what might my numbers have looked like in 2014 if I'd been eating dirty and being lazy? oooh better yet, would my sister's LDL have been so high if she'd followed this WOE all along? Her cardiologist says there's not much you can do for it through lifestyle. Dr. Esselstyn would beg to differ, eh? Maybe she will be strict and will see greatly improved numbers after several months.

[KillSwitch]

@ bunsofaluminum , thanks for sharing and by all means please update with any new info. about your sister.

[Spiral]

Every now and then I re-read Dr. William Clifford Roberts' article titled 20 Questions About Atherosclerosis

The 3rd question is:

Is atherosclerosis genetic in origin?

Infrequently. Although many physicians and the lay public believe that atherosclerosis is genetic, the evidence for that is slim. One way to define the genetic variety of atherosclerosis is by the presence or absence of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors in the liver (3–5). Patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia have no LDL receptors in the liver, and their total cholesterol levels from birth are usually >800 mg/dL. The frequency of this genetic defect is 1 in 1,000,000. Patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia have only 50% of the normal number of LDL receptors in the liver. These patients generally have total cholesterol levels about 300 mg/dL, and they generally die (without lipid-lowering therapy) in their 40s or early 50s. The incidence of this familial defect is 1 in 500. The rest of us apparently have normal numbers of LDL receptors in the liver. Of course, a few patients have genetic defects involving high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and triglyceride production and uptake, but these individuals are relatively few in number (6). Thus, the genetic defect producing atherosclerosis occurs in no more than 1 in 200 and possibly as low as 1 in 400 or 500 persons. This means, of course, that most persons with atherosclerosis acquire it by the types of calories they consume.