If you have one or more close family members with diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, or some cancers, for example, your own risk may be higher, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Other diseases are known to be hereditary — including Crohn’s disease, familial hypercholesterolemia, sickle cell disease, and cystic fibrosis — meaning they’re passed down from parent to child through gene mutations according to the National Institutes of Health National Human Genome Research Institute. According to a University of Utah study, published in May 2015 in the American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A that surveyed more than 5,000 Americans nationwide, although most people realize that knowing their family history of disease is important, only 37 percent have gathered and recorded their family’s health history. Colon and breast cancers are good examples of why knowing your family history is important, says Elizabeth Lo, MD, a primary care physician and internal medicine specialist at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts. “Someone with a strong family history of breast or colon cancer may be screened earlier and more frequently for these diseases.” RELATED: Screening for Cancer and Catching It Early Improves Survival Odds
What Is a Family Health History?
A family health history is a record of the medical conditions that have affected your family — from parents and siblings to aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents — over several generations. Also called a family medical history, it can help you, your children and other relatives spot inherited health risks sooner so you can take steps to protect your health, according to Mayo Clinic. Your family health history is actually a sophisticated way to gauge future health risks because it reveals the results of inherited risks plus the effects of lifestyle and environment, says Sharon Terry, president and CEO of Genetic Alliance, a nonprofit health advocacy organization that empowers people to take control of their health, in part by providing resources for understanding information uncovered by a family health history. The CDC recommends taking a family health history that includes at least three generations. You should include your grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and cousins on both sides of your family. If you have children, include them, too. For everyone in the tree, make note of their date of birth, age, and diseases and conditions that they have or had — such as cancer, dementia, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, mental illness, osteoporosis, or stroke, as well as pregnancy complications and conditions like alcoholism or drug addiction — Mayo Clinic and the CDC recommend. Include when they developed the condition as well as their lifestyle habits, such as smoking. For deceased relatives, include their age at death and cause of death. Read on for tips on how to find this out. Gather information from both sides of your family because you inherit genes from both sides. A history of breast cancer among women (and men) on your father’s side is just as important as a history of prostate cancer in the men on your mother’s side. Uncovering health facts about older generations is very helpful. “It is important to go back a few generations on both sides of the family because a young parent or even a young grandparent may not be old enough to have developed a potentially hereditary disease such as cancer or dementia yet,” explains Dr. Lo. Including not just immediate family but also aunts, uncles, and cousins, and perhaps even second cousins, could help you spot health patterns more easily, Terry adds.
How Does Knowing Your Family Health History Affect Your Personal Health?
According to Lo, family health history may be used to:
Determine your risk for certain diseasesStart early treatment or prevention for diseases that run in your familyDetermine whether you should get certain genetic tests for hereditary diseasesLet you know if you are at risk for passing a disease to your children
“Family disease history may indicate the need for genetic testing and counseling,” says Lo. “A woman with a family history of breast cancer may be tested for certain genes that help doctors predict breast cancer risk and the best treatment.” “A family health history helps us understand not only genetic propensity [to certain diseases and health outcomes], but also the ways that your unique and complex soup of genes is interacting with your family’s way of being in the world,” Terry says. Your family’s eating habits and types of foods members eat regularly, the amount of physical activity family members typically get, and even environmental exposures where they live or work can all contribute to health risks. Passing these habits along to the next generation can also raise or lower their risk for a variety of health conditions. RELATED: 9 Ways to Prevent Heart Disease Some health conditions are very strongly linked to one or a small group of mutated genes — such as sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, breast cancer for women (and men) who’ve inherited the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, familial hemochromatosis (a dangerous buildup of iron), or colon cancer in families with an inherited condition called Lynch syndrome, Terry explains. If you know you have a history of those conditions or genes in your family, undergoing testing to pinpoint genetic risk and taking steps to control or lower it — through screening, disease treatment, and other steps — is recommended. But many other health conditions influenced by our genetics, like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, can be prevented, delayed, or lessened by changing behaviors early on if you know your genetics predispose you to those problems. Some of these steps can include screening tests to gauge your health, early treatment to control risks like high cholesterol and high blood pressure, following a healthy diet, staying active, building strong personal and communal relationships, not smoking, and maintaining a healthy weight according to the CDC. RELATED: How Your Genes Can Play a Role in Whether You Develop Diabetes
Tips for Gathering Your Family Health History
Tracking down all of this information about your family can be a lot of work. Here are some tips: Chat with lots of relatives. Approaching relatives in a low-key, conversational way can help you uncover more information, Terry says. “Younger generations are fairly open about their health, but older adults may be much more private,” she says. Confronting an older relative about the family’s history of heart disease or diabetes could sound like you’re blaming or shaming. Instead, try easing into it by asking older relatives about their everyday lives when they were younger: What did they like to do for leisure, what foods did their families cook and eat every day, and what family recipes were passed down. Be sensitive about asking about causes of death relatives who have passed, and ask if living relatives have had any of the same health concerns. Listen for common, and not-so-common, names for health conditions. In the past, cancer was rarely mentioned or might just be called “the big C,” according to a paper about the history of breast cancer published in the Journal of Women’s Health and an editorial published in March 2016 in The Lancet. Diabetes was sometimes described as “a touch of sugar” according to the National Institutes of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Other health conditions, like osteoporosis or depression or obstructive sleep apnea, might not have even been diagnosed. A late-life hip fracture, extremely low moods, loud snoring, a history of hospital stays, or using treatments like insulin shots could provide clues, Terry notes. Take notes. Use a pen and paper, or keep an electronic record, Lo says. Store it somewhere convenient that you’ll remember, so you can add to it as you learn more and so that you can take it to your own doctor, the CDC recommends. One option: The U.S. Surgeon General offers the online My Family Health Portrait tool that can help you collect, organize, and save important information about hereditary diseases and other diseases that run in families. The password-protected information is stored securely online, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s website. Use a wide variety of sources. In addition to talking with relatives at family gatherings, using family documents such as old letters or saved obituaries as well as public records such as death certificates can be helpful, according to Mayo Clinic. If you were adopted, track down medical records and biological relatives. Ask your adoptive parents if they received medical records from the adoption agency, and contact health and social service agencies that may be able to help you track down your biological parents, the Gladney Center for Adoption recommends. Find out more. Discuss what you’ve found with your doctor, Terry says. Some indications of inherited health risk include having several relatives with the same health condition, one or more relatives who’ve had cancer several times (recurrences or different types of cancer) and developing health conditions, including heart disease and diabetes, earlier in life — such as having a heart attack or other major heart event before age 55 for men, 65 for women. You can also read more about how family history influences specific health risks by using Genetic Alliance’s Disease InfoSearch tool, with up-to-date links to thousands of health advocacy organizations with in-depth information about common and rare diseases. Use it to look up health conditions you find in your family, Terry suggests. It’s important to remember that having a family history of illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, or diabetes does not mean you are destined to get that disease. It may, however, increase your risk. Knowing that ahead of time gives you a chance to do more (and potentially earlier) screening, take steps to prevent or lower your risk, and treat these diseases earlier. With additional reporting by Sari Harrar.
