“My theory is a lot of that is due to inherited dietary habits, not genes.”
There’s probably something to that, but here’s some anecdotal evidence to the contrary: my father and I lived totally different lifestyles. He drank excessively and smoked. I did not. I always jogged and became an amateur body builder at 28. He died of a heart attack at 58, I had a massive heart attack/cardiac arrest at 59. When I had my heart attack I was eating breakfast and planning my work out for the day. Our diets were also completely different; I have been low carb for probably 20 years. Bottom line, you can’t beat genetics.
Bodybuilding can be stressful. Some confuse fitness with health. Here’s an example from the marathoning world.
Dr. Arthur Siegel, director of Internal Medicine at McLean, and his collaborators analyzed the blood of marathoners less than 24 hours after finishing a race and found abnormally high levels of inflammatory and clotting factors of the kind that are known to set the stage for heart attack.