Study Links Bad Childhood to Higher Heart Disease Risk in Middle Age

A new study has found a link between certain kinds of childhood mistreatment and a moderately elevated risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in middle age.

To come to the conclusion Brown University researchers analysed health records and childhood descriptions of 3,554 adults.

Congestive Heart Failure (Congestive Cardiac Failure) Current Management
Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a condition in which the heart fails to work adequately as a pump that can deliver oxygen rich blood to the body.

"We often think about how the early family psychosocial environment influences the mental health of kids," said Eric Loucks, assistant professor of epidemiology in the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

"The fact that it may be important for chronic diseases, like heart disease, hasn't been thought of as much.

"That's what this paper found. That early life family psychosocial environment had a small but significant association with 10-year risk for coronary heart disease," stated Loucks.

Cigarette Smoking - A Silent Killer-Facts, Passive Smoking & How to Quit
Smoking kills the smoker silently, pushing him towards serious illnesses, which slowly lead to death.

Men and women who had higher risky family scores had higher CHD risk than people who had lower risky family scores but were similar otherwise.

Among women, CHD score was most affected by physical abuse, verbal mistreatment, poor parental monitoring and poor household organization and management.

Childhood Stress And Stress Management Tips
The rising influence of media influences children watching TV serials and fashion shows with skinny models, to live on adult levels prematurely.

For men, abuse didn't matter as much as neglect, in that only the latter two conditions (poor monitoring and organization) mattered to CHD risk.

The CHD risk factors most strongly correlated with risky family score were smoking for men, and smoking and HDL cholesterol for women.

"One of the big drivers was smoking. Think of a kid whose parents aren't monitoring him so much. That could quite easily allow him to try smoking. Smoking is highly addictive, and so can easily continue into adulthood. Smoking is one of the major risk factors for heart disease," Loucks said.

The research was published July 22 in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Source-ANI