Can you inherit high cholesterol from your parents?

Can you inherit high cholesterol from your parents?

Familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH for short) is an inherited condition which can lead to extremely high cholesterol levels. It’s passed down through families in the genes. Without treatment, FH can lead to heart disease at a very young age.

Is high cholesterol genetically inherited?

For some people, high blood levels of cholesterol come from a diet that’s high in saturated fat and animal products, but for others, high cholesterol is genetic: It runs in the family. In addition to getting cholesterol from dietary sources like meat and dairy, our bodies make cholesterol, too.

Do you inherit heart disease from your mother or father?

Your health isn’t entirely in your mother’s hands, though. Heart disease, diabetes, and other illnesses are caused by a complex interaction between the genes you inherited from your mother and father, your diet, and other factors in your environment throughout your life.

What percentage of high cholesterol is genetic?

When It’s in Your Genes Almost 1 in 3 adults has high cholesterol. Only 1 in 300 people has familial hypercholesterolemia. Anyone who has one of the 1,500 possible gene variants that cause the condition has a 50% chance of passing that gene on to their children.

How long can you have high cholesterol before it causes damage?

“It adds up over time, which may mean a heart attack or stroke in your 50s or 60s.” The longer you have high cholesterol, the more likely you are to develop heart disease. In one study, people who had high levels for 11 years or more had double the risk than those who had them for 10 years or less.

How do you beat hereditary high cholesterol?

FH can be easily and effectively treated with a cholesterol-lowering statin. Usually, a high-intensity statin such as atorvastatin or rosuvastatin is needed to bring it down. Sometimes a different cholesterol-lowering drug called ezetimibe is given as well as a statin.

Can you live a long life with high cholesterol?

They concluded that 92 percent of people with a high cholesterol level lived longer, and called for a re-evaluation of the guidelines for cardiovascular prevention, “in particular because the benefits from statin treatment have been exaggerated.”