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Asked by nishathchoudhury17 to Lyn, Katy, Paul, PB on 26 Jun 2013.
Question: apart from the environment and genetics what other factors contribute to heart disease increasing
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Peter Balfe answered on 26 Jun 2013:
Conventionally we break down the entire world into these 2 halves, nature and nurture. There are many genetic factors which are associated with heart disease, as you would expect given the complexity of the heart and circulation. But the increases we’re seeing are almost all due to changes in diet, food processing and the universal availability of sugar. Google “Robert Lustig” for the low down on this!
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Ee Lyn Lim answered on 26 Jun 2013:
Like Peter said, by saying ‘environment and genetics’ you’ve basically covered all bases 🙂 If you’re not born with it (genetics) then it has to be caused by the environment. But genetics technically wouldn’t cause an increase in the incidence of disease – if anything, if the gene makes you weaker it should be selected out of the gene pool! So the increase in heart disease that we’re seeing is pretty much completely due to the environment, especially diet and lifestyle.
One other thing I can think of that would make the numbers go up is actually a good thing – more cases are being reported and recorded because people are more aware of heart disease, and are going to see the doctor about it. That’s not an increase in the number of people who have the disease though – it’s just an increase in the number that we know about!
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Paul Waines answered on 26 Jun 2013:
The main reason for heart disease increasing is our western lifestyle- I guess you could include that in ‘environment’!
Smoking, eating the wrong foods , lack of exercise, these don’t do our hearts much good.
But on the positive side, we are becoming more aware of the causes that we can do something about (can’t do a lot about our genes though) and hopefully that means we can start to do something to stop this increase…
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