Family History

It’s no secret that heart disease can run in families. In fact, your family’s health history may be one of the strongest influences on your risk of developing heart disease.

You have a higher risk of heart disease if you have a family history of “early heart disease.” That is, a father or brother who had heart disease before age 55 or a mother or sister who had heart disease before age 65.

While you can’t change your genes, you can change many behaviors that affect them. Therefore, you need to understand the risk factors that impacted your family. Did your father have high cholesterol? Did you mother have high blood pressure? Knowing this information can help you take action to protect your body against its genetic tendencies.

That’s why it’s important to record your family’s health history. To make sure you’re fully aware of any health risks that run in your family, it’s wise to gather a written family health history.

Start by interviewing your parents and siblings. The health histories of other close blood relatives can also hold important clues, so be sure to include your children, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, too. Just follow these simple steps:

• Make a list of all blood relatives you wish to include in your family history.
• Pick a time and place to talk, one on one. If it’s not possible to talk to your relatives in person, you can also talk with them over the telephone, or send them questions by mail or e-mail. Ask other relatives to fill in the gaps about family members you cannot contact or who are deceased,.
• Ask if they’ve had or currently have any of the following health conditions and write down the answers:
  • heart disease
  • high cholesterol
  • high blood pressure
  • diabetes
  • smoker
  • overweight
• Record important dates, too. Date like when a heart attack occurred, how long a person was a smoker, or when diabetes was diagnosed.
• Ask about your ancestry. Some heart disease risk factors are higher for certain ethnicities.
• Review your findings with your doctor. He can assess your health risks and recommend lifestyle changes.
• Keep your family history up to date. The information will not only help you, but your children will want access to it at some point, too.

What else can you do to keep history from repeating itself?

Having a family history of heart disease doesn’t mean you will get it. Your lifestyle and health habits give you a lot of control. These are smart steps to follow:

• Reduce other risk factors. You can’t change your family history, but you can do things to keep your overall heart disease risk as low as possible. Find out how you can get heart healthy.
• Get regular screening tests for conditions such as blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes. By getting screened, you can monitor your health and detect any other risk factors you may have.
• Make heart-healthy lifestyle changes, one step at a time!