Diabetes was once considered merely a risk factor for a heart attack on par with other risk factors. However, diabetes is so strongly related to coronary heart disease that having diabetes now carries the same high risk for a future heart attack as a history of previous heart attack.
A new study has found that children who have two parents with diabetes exhibit abnormal function of their endothelial cell (cells lining the walls of all blood vessels), even when their fasting blood glucose levels are normal.
Such endothelial dysfunction is generally accepted as an early marker of atherosclerosis. These study results are consistent with earlier studies showing that the factors which promote cardiovascular disease in people with type 2 diabetes are present long before blood sugar becomes elevated.
The authors of this new study suggest that having two parents with diabetes should be considered as a risk factor when deciding how aggressively to initiate preventive heart health measures.
Another study, which followed more than 4,000 individuals over the age of 50 for 10 years, discovered that those who'd lost their jobs had a twofold increase in the number of heart attacks and strokes compared to those who continued to work.
Factors that may contribute to the higher rate of cardiovascular events include financial difficulties with their associated family stresses, loss of status, and possible depression, which is known to increase the risk of heart attacks. People who leave their jobs involuntarily, as well as their doctors and families, should be aware of the potential health dangers of forced unemployment.
So, do we need to worry about the cardiovascular fate of those who hold political office if we vote them out of the job? Probably not, since they will most likely get jobs as lobbyists.
Though we can't change either of these additional risk factors, awareness of the effects of diabetes in the family and of unwanted loss of a job may encourage the lifestyle measures known to protect against cardiovascular disease.
