If your parent or sibling died young from cardiovascular disease, take heart: There are ways you can counter any genetic predisposition to the illness.
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New research shows that people can minimize an inherited risk for heart attack by living right - exercising, eating healthy, staying slim and quitting smoking.
Even with a little effort in these areas, people can cut their high genetic risk of heart disease by more than half, said senior researcher Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, director of the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
But the opposite also is true, Kathiresan warned. People born with a genetic advantage protecting them against heart disease can ruin their good luck through unhealthy lifestyle choices.
"For heart attack at least, DNA is not destiny," Kathiresan said. "You have control over your risk for heart attack, even if you've been dealt a bad hand."
Kathiresan presented his findings Sunday at the American Heart Association's annual meeting, in New Orleans. The study was published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.
For their research, Kathiresan and his colleagues pooled data on more than 55,000 participants in four large-scale health studies.
The researchers analyzed each person's genetic risk for heart disease using a panel of 50 gene variants previously associated with elevated heart attack risk.
They also judged each person's lifestyle based on four factors: smoking, body weight, diet and exercise.
The requirements to have a good lifestyle were not rigorous, Kathiresan said. The person essentially had to not smoke, not be obese, get physical activity at least one day a week, and regularly meet at least half of the American Heart Association's recommendations for a healthy diet.
"It's safe to say we're not being that aggressive in terms of the lifestyle score," Kathiresan said.
For example, a person could be overweight, but not obese, and still meet the criteria for a healthy lifestyle in this study, he said.
People also didn't need to meet current U.S. physical activity guidelines, which call for two and a half hours of moderate physical activity or one and a half hours of vigorous physical activity.
Even these minimal lifestyle changes mattered greatly for people at high genetic risk of heart disease. ■