Why Is It Important To Discuss Family Health History?
Our families impact many areas of our lives, including our physical and mental health. Families share genes, indicating your risk for various conditions, from heart disease to cancer and diabetes. Knowing, recording, and sharing this information is essential for helping you and your family live long, healthy, quality lives.
What Is Family Health History?
Your family health history is a record of conditions that have affected loved ones in your family. While you can have an extended family health history, the most important group to focus on is your immediate family. Immediate family includes parents, children, and siblings. If you have information on any of your grandparents, uncles, or aunts, this would be a nice-to-have, but not absolutely necessary.
Genetics are a major contributing factor to many health conditions. Families also tend to have similar lifestyle habits and live in similar environments, which also affect someone’s health.
Once you have a family health history, you can share that information with your doctors. This history will give them a more well-rounded idea of your health and help them better predict potential health concerns.
What Information Should I Collect?
The first step in creating a health history record is to collect basic information from your immediate family, starting with your parents, siblings, and children. The basic information you want to include is their name, race, date of birth, place of birth, and date of death if they’ve passed. It’s okay if you don’t know this information, but it can help doctors identify environmental or situational factors that may have contributed to a loved one’s health.
The next step is to list each family member's conditions. Obviously, it’s important to note major health conditions like cancer or heart disease, but you also want to list non-life-threatening conditions like allergies, vision loss, and high blood pressure. Other helpful information to collect is a list of major surgeries, medications, and immunizations. When collecting this information, note the age of the family member when the condition started showing symptoms.
One type of condition that many people overlook is mental health conditions. Mood disorders, physiological conditions, and substance abuse are all conditions worth recording in your family health history. A family history of mental health disorders has as much impact on your health as physical disorders and is worth sharing with your doctor.
The last piece of essential information to collect for your family health history is lifestyle factors. You don’t need detailed answers but try to gauge a general sense of each person’s exercise habits, diets, hobbies, and occupations. Also, make a note of unhealthy habits like smoking.
Working With Visiting Angels
When an aging loved one receives a diagnosis, it can be an emotionally grueling experience for the family. It’s especially difficult when that loved one needs additional assistance to stay safe and healthy at home.
That’s where Visiting Angels can step in to help. Our team of professional caregivers can provide at-home care to assist your aging loved one with nonmedical tasks like cooking, cleaning, medication reminders, personal grooming, mobility, and more. Each care service is customized to meet the needs of each client so you can feel confident in your loved one’s care.
Contact our Rockwall, Texas office to learn how Visiting Angels can benefit you and your aging loved one.