If heart disease and even a few strokes have ran in your family, yet your family tends to be considerably overweight, however you are in good shape, eat right, exercise daily, etc... are you still at a relatively high risk of developing the same thing some members of your family has despite your good physical shape?

lovin,

Heart disease has a large genetic component to it. You can fight it to the best of your ability and minimize the risk but you will still have an inherant risk that is higher than someone from a family WITHOUT heart disease. It's just like you and your spouse both coming from families with lots of red hair...odds are good your kids will have red hair.

Look at a family history as a warning beacon to mitigate all OTHER factors affecting heart disease risk.

Ahh. I thought heart disease had a big part to do with cholesterol, which also had a big part to do with obesity. And considering it's really only the overweight folks who have heart disease, I just kinda assumed that.

Ahh well. Guess the best you can do is eat your apples and wheaties and work out a couple times a week.

lovinthev8 ? cool name...
I was very active and I was not over weight when I first started having bad heart problems. Man, I was climbing in Mammoth cave on one of their long rough tours when I had one of my heart attacks. I was climbing up a mountain pass in the Philippines when I had another.

My medical condition greatly reduced my mobility; and through the years of not being able to be active anymore, I am now overweight…

For many years I’ve only been able to eat small meals (about 8 oz, sometimes less) because it bothers my heart.
My husband calls me a cheap date… Ha Ha
Plus I’ll eat a small carb snack (less than one oz) when I have to take medicine that will hurt my stomach. My biggest vise is I like watered down sweet tea. I like healthy food and hate white bread, cheese, and greasy food and without dieting my daily calorie intake is between 1200 and 1700. I’ve been on a low cholesterol diet since 1985 with no results (still dangerously high). I am not able to tolerate statins or niacin’s, and only take zetia. I’ve been told that my high cholesterol is inherited and that it’s my liver that’s messing me up.

I wonder how many people have become overweight because of their disability, and not, become disabled because of their being overweight ?
enie

Man, I'm sorry to hear that. How old were you when you started having problems?

It's sad to hear situations like this. But in the end there isn't much you can do besides doing your best to exercise and eat right, which a lot of people don't realize how important that is.

I talked more to this girl the other day, and evidently she just exaggerated when she said "ah yeah, my family has all sorts of problems." She failed to tell me exactly how big her family is and how little the problem exists. Sounds more like it's an obesity thing on her family than any kind of inheritance.

Enie, did your parents/brothers/sisters have any of the same issues that you are currently facing?

lovethev8,
I'm 56 now; I started having some heart problems that slowed me down when I was 34. That’s when I started eating right. I started having heart attacks when I was 44 and was completely disabled by age 50.
My Grandfather, Dad, and Brother all had Marfan and Congestive Heart Failure. Plus several immediate family relatives had major heart problems with a lot of mini strokes. Not sure if they had the cholesterol problems, but it sounds like it from the mini strokes. Praise God, my sisters seem to be clear of these problems.

lovethev8, you said: "Sounds more like it's an obesity thing in her family than any kind of inheritance."

I think it sounds more like she is dealing with both inherited problems and her co-dependency on food. That would really accelerate the progress of any heart condition she might have inherited.

Oh she doesn't have any dependency on food. The girl is 115 pounds!! Hahaha. But her family members that DO suffer from these problems are overweight by a good bit, which is why I said what I did.

I know somebody with Marfan, and he explained to me some things about it. It's very interesting, although extremely rare but seems common to pass through families. Sorry to hear about your struggles, but kudos for having a good head on them shoulders of yours!!