Coronary heart disease
occurs when plaque builds up and narrows the arteries that supply blood to the
heart. The plaque buildup can either completely
block the artery or detach and cause a pulmonary embolism. Coronary heart disease is one of the world’s
leading causes of premature death.
Recent studies have shown that the biological processes that determine
height may also affect a person’s susceptibility to coronary heart
disease. In this study, genetic data was
taken from 200,000 participants and it was found that every 2.5in decrease in
height affects coronary heart disease risk by 13.5%. One explanation of this may be from the
relativity of the person’s size to the size of one’s coronal arteries (the shorter
the person, the smaller their coronal arteries will be).
This article was very
interesting to me. My family and I are
of short stature so right away this article caught my attention. My family also has a history of high
cholesterol but that may be from living in the Philippines (Filipino food tends
to be high in sugar and cholesterol).
The correlations in this article were also quite interesting such as the
correlation between height and size of arteries. It also made me think about serving sizes and
to whom the serving sizes are relative to.
My family also runs on the shorter side and it is really nice to have this information so that we can monitor our hearts for this disease and hopefully if one of us do wind up getting it we will catch it early.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend in college who is super short. This article is very interesting. Never would I have imagined that height and CA are connected. I always thought it had to do with a persons diet and weight. I assumed that shorter coronary arteries are more efficient for shorter people. But I guess this makes sense too. It is easier for the arteries to get occluded if they are smaller.
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