Huffington Magazine Issue 61 | Page 109

Exit without a family history of heart disease — suggesting that the propensity to get stressed may be, to some degree, inherited. “Depression and stress are known risk factors for heart disease, and they both have strong heritability,” lead author Mark W. Ketterer, Ph.D., of Henry Ford Hospital’s Department of Behavioral Health, said in a press release. “None of the other risk factors, including high cholesterol, high blood pressure or diabetes, were shown to have a significant familial link in this group. Therefore, it’s likely that men who have an early onset of heart disease might have a genetic predisposition to stress, which causes the heart disease.” 3. SPERM & OFFSPRING DEVELOPMENT Here’s a big incentive for future fathers to start de-stressing now: Research in animals suggests that chronic stress could result in gene expression changes to dad’s sperm — and those changes could manifest in his offspring in the form of a muted reaction to stress. “It didn’t matter if dads were going through puberty or in adulthood when stressed before they mated. We’ve shown here for the first time STRESS LESS HUFFINGTON 08.11.13 While stress tends to activate the ‘tend and befriend’ response in women, men have been found to react to stress more with the aggressive ‘fight or flight’ response.” that stress can produce long-term changes to sperm that reprogram the offspring HPA stress axis regulation,” lead researcher Tracy L. Bale, Ph.D., said in a university press release. “These findings suggest one way in which paternalstress exposure may be linked to such neuropsychiatric diseases.” 4. PROSTATE CANCER DEVELOPMENT A recent study on mice found c