Family History May Predict Your Future

With Marcia Radke, M.D., Internal Medicine, Columbia St. Mary’s

Posted: Nov. 1, 2007

A comprehensive family history is a powerful tool in patient care and sharing it with your doctor can help personalize your health care. A family medical history can help your doctor recognize health patterns that may be an indicator of future health risks. The information can help determine a diagnosis and strategies for testing, treatment and medication. Family history may even help prevent certain diseases, if we can institute lifestyle changes early on.

Just as eye and hair color are genetically passed down from one generation to another, so can the predisposition for major diseases such as heart disease, cancers, stroke, dementia and diabetes. A comprehensive history can also tell your doctor if there is a chance for uncommon diseases like cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia or hemophilia in the family.

Most of our patients know that family history is important to health. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Web site, a recent survey found that 96 percent of Americans believe that knowing their family history is important.

However, the same survey concluded that only one-third of Americans have ever tried to gather and write down their family's health history, and of that group, some fail to share the information with their doctor because they forget, think it’s not important or are reticent about sharing their medical history. Tell your doctor, even if you think something is not important.

The most helpful history involves first-degree, blood relatives such as mother, father and siblings. But, it is also helpful to have information on aunts, uncles and grandparents. More information is better than less. Include your family’s ethnicity too. This is important because some diseases are more prevalent among certain ethnic backgrounds.

It’s important to know your risks and to identify what you can do to take preventive measures. It’s not a sure thing, but knowing your risk based on history may motivate you to change an unhealthy behavior and avoid the onset of disease.

Your history may not only serve as a potent predictor of your health; it may warrant genetic testing. If we see patterns, particularly for certain cancers, genetic testing can be helpful to determine treatment. In certain situations, genetic testing will become more common. But, until then doctors rely on these important health histories to give insight into their patients’ genetic dispositions.

Recording history
In 2004, the Surgeon General declared Thanksgiving Day to be National Family History Day. It’s a day when families gather together, giving them an opportunity to talk about their family histories – which includes medical histories. We encourage you to talk about and write down any health issues that run in your family.

Ask your family about medical issues and the age at which they were diagnosed. Ask about a family tendency to allergies, migraines and asthma. Get a reproductive history, including occurrence of birth defects and infertility. Also, ask your parents about any childhood injuries or diseases that you may have had but were too young to remember.

There are websites, such as www.hhs.gov/familyhistory/, that give you questions to help start a dialogue, and forms to help record the information.

Learning about your family’s medical history and sharing it with your doctor gives you an active role in personalizing your health care. This can go a long way toward ensuring a precise diagnosis, effective treatments and medications and a longer, healthier life.

Marcia Radke, M.D.
Internal Medicine
414-326-1745

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