Business of Life"Family history may be the single greatest risk factor for disease," says Dr.Paula Yoon of the Centers for Disease Control. I learned about the CDC's Family Health Initiative is encouraging consumers to complete a family history and leave a copy with your physician in the cover story, Treatment Tailor-Made For You by Dianne Hales in the September 19th edition of Parade Magazine.
Ironically, what seems old-fashioned, a family history has become even more important in these days of personalized medicine and genomics. "The ultimate genomic test is available now and it's called a family history. It captures not only shared genes but also shared environment, shared values, shared behavior and shared culture," says Dr Muin Khoury, director of the Office of Genomics and Disease Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If your family history reveals family susceptibilities to particular diseases a doctor can run specific tests and customize your treatment. If you learned say that a relative has colon cancer, you should start screening for colon cancer 10 years before the norm. By charting your family history, you can set priorities based on your personal health risks.
A family history is something only you can do. It used to be that we would learn how people in the family died or got sick when families would get together over Sunday dinner or for holidays. Nowadays, families are much more dispersed and, unless there is a reason, not many people remember what their grandparents died of. Which is why constructing and memorializing a family history can enable you with your doctor. Thanksgiving could be a good time to create your family history because you'll be seeing or talking to most of your relatives.
Get the info first.
Information on the CDC's Family History Initiative is here.
To create a family history, go to the Mayo Clinic and search for "family history"
One more quote from the article in reference to the power of personalized medicine through genomics, “This is a new era in medicine,” says Dr. Ralph Snyderman of Duke University, which launched a personalized health-care program for its employees last January. “People think that genomics will have an impact in their children’s lifetime, but it is happening now. I urge them to rush to take advantage of it for the sake of living longer, healthier lives.”
Posted by Jill Fallon at October 1, 2004 11:48 PM | Permalink