Mothers-to-be can cut the risks of a child developing heart disease even before the child is born.
New guidance from the American Heart Association says that by sticking to eight simple health rules before she falls pregnant a mother can protect her future progeny from suffering from the world’s major killer. Heart disease around the world claims about 18 million lives a year.
Read More »Among these rules:
• Eat heart-healthy food
• Obtain plenty of regular exercise
• Refrain from smoking
• Maintain a normal weight
• Keep your glucose at normal levels
• Keep your blood pressure at healthy levels
• Control your intake of cholesterol
• Make sure you get plenty of sleep
Using these guidelines researchers found in a study that only one in every five children aged over 2 in the United States has optimal heart health.
Process Starts Before Pregnancy
The biological processes that result in adverse pregnancies start before a person becomes pregnant, Dr. Sadiya Khan says in the new American Heart Association scientific statement. Khan is chair of the scientific-statement writing group and an assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
For that reason, she explains, it is essential to focus on ensuring heart health before pregnancy.
Action that is taken after a person becomes pregnant might be too late. They might miss the chance to change the course of heart health for the pregnant woman or her children, she suggests.
Heart Health is Intergenerational
In addition, the data show that heart health is intergenerational. The period before pregnancy is a critical stage of life that impacts not only the health of the person who becomes pregnant but also of the children born to her, Khan says.
If a mother’s heart health before pregnancy is at a low level, complications can occur such as gestational diabetes, preterm birth, high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia, or giving birth to an infant who is small for the child’s gestational age.
These complications at pregnancy are associated with a higher risk for heart disease among those children, according to new research.
Specifically:
• A child that is born preterm has a 53% greater risk of suffering from heart disease by the age of 43.
• If a woman suffers with Type 2 diabetes before falling pregnant, the child has a 39% higher chance of heart disease by the age of 40.
The statement adds that, although the evidence links a woman’s pre-pregnancy health to her offspring’s health, no large trials with sufficient people and data have been held to test whether improving your heart health before pregnancy will reduce complications at pregnancy, death related to pregnancy, or cardiovascular risk for the offspring.
If a research study that concentrated on heart health before pregnancy successfully cut down on pregnancy complications and improved the heart health of both mother and child, it could be “practice changing,” Khan says.
Stress, psychological health, and resilience also need to be taken into account, she adds.
Future research needs to include people from diverse backgrounds and historically marginalized ethnicities and races, she notes.
Responsibility is Not Only That of the Mother
A major opportunity is available to improve health across the course of one’s life and for multiple future generations by improving heart health before pregnancy, the statement says.
The responsibility for this, however, should be placed on all of us and not only on individual women, Khan says. The period before pregnancy offers a rare window of opportunity to address the rising incidence of adverse pregnancy results. It also provides us with the chance to improve and interrupt the intergenerational results related to a mother’s health by focusing on solutions at an individual as well as policy and community levels.
The scientific statement appears in the journal Circulation.
