Family Health History Essay

In this paper, I will be discussing my family health history as illustrated in the disease family tree. What is family health history? Family health history refers to a collection of information about diseases that run in your family, as well as the eating habits, activities, and environments that your family shares. The knowledge about diseases in your family can help you make healthy choices. One’s family history can affect one’s health in different ways since we inherit many things from our parents and grandparents; genes passed on to you from your parents can determine your health. Some genes can increase one’s chances of developing certain diseases but it can also depend on the type of environment, life style or behavior, geographical

Looking at the family health history, we notice that the presence of disease is at the top and absence of disease in the second and third generations (which I will be focusing on), this could be to several reasons ranging from person habits (lifestyle), environmental factors, income levels and even genetics.

My grandfather on my mum’s side died of colon cancer, colon cancer is where the body extracts water and salt from solid wastes. Colon cancer happens when out of control cell growth occurs in the large intestine. Colon cancer can be caused through genetics; a genetic predisposition that can be inherited from family members, but most colon cancer occur in people without a family health history.

Everyone is born with certain genetic mutations that make the them more likely to develop cancer in a later time in life. Though they might have a genetic feature, cancer will not develop unless triggered by environmental factors such as air and water pollution. As a matter of fact, my grandfather started smoking alongside consuming heavy amounts of alcohol around the age of 15, smoking and heavy alcohol intake have been considered as one of the potential causes of colon

My aunt, Connie suffers from type 2 diabetes which she inherited from my grandmother. However, we cannot only rely on genetics as the primary cause if type 2 diabetes, I also looked at other possible causes that might have led to the diabetes.

When I asked aunt Connie about her health history, she mentioned that she was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, a condition characterized by irregular menstrual periods, excess hair growth and obesity which increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, there a possibility that this condition increased her chances of suffering from type 2 diabetes.

Environmental factors such as barriers to physical activity (no hiking trails and absence of recreational parks ) which was also due to the geography increased her chances of suffering from type 2 diabetes since she never practiced any physical activity whatsoever. The exposure to chemical pollution as she used a variety of beauty care products which are known to contain chemicals such as lead which increase insulin resistance and thus