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people with healthy moms avoid heart issues for longer
cardiovascular risk factors like diabetes and hypertension get imprinted on children from their mothers.
nov 9 2020
3 minute read
new research sheds light on how a mother's health and lifestyle may impact her children.
getty
mothers with healthy lifestyles pass on protective habits that help their offspring’s hearts take a licking and keep on ticking, researchers say.
a new study, published in the european journal of preventive cardiology , has found the children of mothers with healthy cardiovascular behaviours live nearly a decade longer before experiencing the heart issues of kids with unhealthy mothers. the heart health of fathers did not have a significant impact.
“our study suggests that mothers are the primary gatekeepers of their children’s health,” said james muchira, author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at vanderbilt university. “this maternal influence persists into the adulthood of their offspring.”
while other research has found nature and nurture both factor into a child’s health, this is the first study to focus on how long these protective benefits to the heart persist, according to science daily . to test their hypothesis, researchers examined 1,989 offspring-mother-father trios from the framingham heart study — a group of patients that was enrolled in 1971 at the average age of 32 and monitored for the next 46 years.
“crucially, the study followed offspring into most of their adult life when heart attacks and strokes actually occur,” muchira said.
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the heart health of parents was measured using seven factors: diet, physical activity, not smoking, and normal body mass index, blood pressure, blood cholesterol and blood glucose. parents were then placed into three cardiovascular groups: poor (zero to two factors met), intermediate (three to four met) and ideal (five to seven met).
researchers compared parental ranking to the age at which offspring developed cardiovascular disease and found mothers with ideal heart health had kids that lived nine years longer without heart issues than offspring of mothers with poor heart health. children of mothers with poor heart health had twice the risk of an early onset of cardiovascular issues, a finding connected to the outsized influence mothers have in the early years of child development.
“if mothers have diabetes or hypertension during pregnancy, those risk factors get imprinted in their children at a very early age,” muchira said. “in addition, women are often the primary caregivers and the main role model for behaviours.”
a mother’s unhealthy habits transferred more efficiently to sons than daughters, evidence of the role offspring play in their own health, muchira said. “this was because sons had more unfavourable lifestyle habits than daughters, making the situation even worse,” he said. “it shows that individuals can take charge of their own health. people who inherit a high risk from their mother can reduce that risk by exercising and eating well. if they don’t, the risk will be multiplied.”
heart disease is the second leading cause of death in canada with about 2.4 million people over the age of 20 living with a diagnosed condition, according to the government of canada . with roughly 12 canadians from this group dying every hour, researchers hope a more targeted approach to cardiovascular care can break what is often an intergenerational cycle.
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“family-based interventions should occur during pregnancy and very early in the child’s life, so that the real impact of protective cardiovascular health tracks into adulthood,” muchira said. “for example, pairing mothers and young children in an exercise or diet improvement programme. if children grow into healthy adults, they will not acquire the same cardiovascular risk as their parents, a situation that will raise the chances of having even healthier grandchildren.”
more information about heart disease, including how to access patient support can be found at heart & stroke .
dave yasvinski is a freelance writer with healthing.ca.
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