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Keep Your Kids On The Right Heart Path

Studies show that heart disease is rooted in childhood habits and lifestyle choices.  Help your kids make the healthy choices now so they don’t pay for it later.



Good heart health begins early in life.  Even prenatal choices women make can mean better heart health for children.  The children of women who smoked during pregnancy had higher blood pressure compared to children of non-smokers, and parents’ weight also influenced blood pressure. Breast-feeding was associated with a lower blood pressure.  The researchers reviewed parental and early-life factors that influenced blood pressure in children at the age of five. Interest in blood pressure at such an early age comes from the recognition that high blood pressure is a major risk factor for heart disease and that blood pressure in adults tends to follow the same pattern seen in childhood.

Age of the mother can also make a difference in blood pressure too
.  The child’s blood pressure increases with the age of the birth mother.  Breast-feeding for at least six months was associated with lower blood pressure.  Other factors associated with blood pressure were the mother’s weight and height, the father’s weight, and the child’s weight, height, and body mass at age five.


The findings have implications for childhood prevention strategies that might yield benefits into adulthood, investigators concluded.  Because childhood blood pressure tracks into adulthood, interventions aimed at early life risk factors – stopping smoking during pregnancy, breast feeding, prevention of obesity in all family members – may be important for reducing the population distribution of blood pressure, and thus cardiovascular disease risk.

Source: webmd.com