How will heart disease impact my children?
Heart disease will impact your children. The predispositon for heart disease is inherited in many cases, not in all, but in many, so it's important to think about your children if you have heart disease. Your children share the same environment that you do, but they also share your genes. They're not carbon copies, you certainly know that. But, in fact, they do have some of the same genetic predispositions to high blood pressure, to high cholesterol, and whether those will develop fully in them or not is something you can't know at this time. If you've already demonstrated that you have coronary artery disease, it's important to make sure that your children have the best chance to avoid it. And so it's important to model to them a healthy lifestyle in terms of diet and exercise, and it's important to model to them as well the benefit of having a health care provider who helps you manage your risk factors. So modeling a good relationship with that health care provider is quite important. It's important to be certain that your children don't already have problems that might lead them to have coronary artery disease, and you'll want to talk to your doctor about whether your particular problems are likely to be inherited. You also want to be certain that if you look around your family and see, for example, a family of people who are overweight and obese, that you're talking, not just about a genetic predispostion, but perhaps an environment in which food is provided to an extent that's excessive or exercise is too little, and you may want to correct those risk factors as well for your children.
