A Healthy Vision

Courtesy of Independent Health’s Corporate Wellness Team

Documenting your family’s health history can potentially save your life. The more information you have can be used to help detect early signs of serious medical conditions that may run in your family, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers.

By providing your family’s health history to your doctor, it will be easier for them to identify factors that put you at higher risk for developing diseases. Your doctor can also make recommendations on how you can reduce those risks and develop an action plan for you, with the goal of helping you live longer and healthier.

Ideally, your family health history should include information from three generations of relatives, including children, brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and cousins. If you have gaps in your own understanding of your family health history, schedule a sit down with family members or reach out to them by phone or email. Make sure to include the older members of the family because they will know details about previous generations that you may not be aware of. For those family members who are deceased, ask close relatives these three key questions about each person:

1. What was their age when they passed?
2. What was the cause of their death?
3. When were they first diagnosed?

Try to gather family histories from your father’s side and your mother’s side. You may be surprised how often the same afflictions are passed down from generation to generation. Sometimes these conditions are genetic, but they also may be related to lifestyle choices like smoking or unhealthy dietary patterns. If the same health problems show up on both sides of your family, your risk can be even greater.

Once all the information has been gathered, document what you have learned. This is an invaluable diagnostic tool that will help your health care provider have a clearer picture of what to watch for in your health. Based on this information, your doctor may recommend preventive care screenings in specific areas. For instance, if colon cancer or breast cancer runs in your family, your doctor may want you to have a colonoscopy or mammogram more frequently than the standard medical guidelines.

Remember that gathering your family health history is an ongoing collection of information that you should add to and update in the years ahead.  Even though you can’t change the genes that have been passed on, you can develop healthy habits, such as daily exercise and eating whole foods, that can help you live your best life, no matter what your family history looks like.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a variety of “Family Health History Tools and Resources” available at its website that you may find helpful.