11 ms·
There must be major genetic component to heart attacks. They run in some families, and, as the article says, being South Asian is in itself higher risk. Then t
by inglor_cz 5y ago
There must be major genetic component to heart attacks. They run in some families, and, as the article says, being South Asian is in itself higher risk.
Then there are the counterexamples. My grandma ate like pig (as a kid, I couldn't even tolerate the smell of some foods she enjoyed), was fat for most of her life, her blood lipids were all over the place, she never exercised and died of cancer aged 90 with negligible levels of atherosclerosis. Something in her genetic(?) makeup protected her from the consequences.
- sph 5y agoWhat did she eat? There's a massive difference between gorging in meat and vegetables or donuts and fries. Not all food is the same.
- inglor_cz 5y agoShe didn't eat donuts and fries, true. She was born in 1926 in rural eastern Slovakia, so her staples were meat (including cheap, highly processed meat), local variant of pasta (halušky), plus a lot of animal fat. Her cholesterol was something like 9,5, often exceeding 10. She also smoked for 30 years, but stopped around 65 years of age. Theoretically, her arteries should have been clogged like crazy. They weren't.
- noneeeed 5y agoThere are definitely genetic factors in the risk that cholesterol poses to the body. We are finding more and more genes that impact either how we digest and process food, what we do with excesses, and how our bodies react to all this. Then there is all the work going into the microbiome and its impact on these factors. We like to think that everyone is the same, but the more that people research this stuff the more complex it seems to be.