(NewsNation) — New research is linking women’s heart health to their father’s diet.

A study from the University of California, Riverside found that fathers could potentially alter gene activity by eating a high-cholesterol diet, which could then increase the risk of their daughters developing heart disease.

However, the study was conducted on mice, and Dr. Dave Montgomery, a board-certified cardiologist and NewsNation medical contributor, said while there are some important implications, researchers can’t make generalizations about humans based on this one study.

Montgomery said the bottom line is that a father’s lifestyle matter and his diet can have a long-term effect on his offspring.

“We very often will focus on mom, but this is sort of pointing to this idea that dad has to be as healthy as he can be as well,” he said.

During the experiment, researchers fed the female mice a normal diet and fed the male mice a high-fat diet. They found it impacted the female offspring more than it did the male offspring.

However, Montgomery said the research still leaves some questions to be answered. For example, he explained that the researchers didn’t give the female mice a high-fat diet to see if that would impact offspring.

“The bottom line is that both parents should be as healthy as they possibly can muster to have offspring. That’s healthy long term,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery also explained how daughters can reverse the bad health effects their fathers may pass on to them.