Heart disease is a very scary thing. It is important for people to know whether they are at a higher risk for developing heart disease than other people so that they can take steps to decrease that risk as much as possible. Fortunately, you can find out about your personal heart disease risk by doing some family history research and sharing your findings with your doctor.
In order to get an idea of whether heart disease runs in your family, ask your parents. If at all possible, find out whether your parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and great grandparents had heart disease. Make a list of which relatives had it, at what ages they were diagnosed with it, what kinds of treatments they had, and whether it was the ultimate cause of their death. Since diabetes and high blood pressure can also increase your heart disease risk, be sure to note whether your relatives had those conditions as well. As I mentioned before, it is important to share your findings with your doctor so that the two of you can work together on a plan for reducing your heart disease risk.
Heart disease is rather complex because there is an immense variety of risk factors that are thought to cause it. By coming to understand which risk factors (if any) run in your family, your doctor can help you to find the most effective ways to lower your heart disease risk. Not all risk reduction measures are created equal. For example, the advice to drink alcohol in moderation is only good advice for people with certain genes. For others, it does nothing to reduce heart disease risk or could even increase it. Managing cholesterol may be essential to reducing the heart disease risk of some people but many people with a high risk of developing heart disease have normal cholesterol. Knowing the details of heart disease in your family can go a long way towards ensuring that you find and take the most effective measures towards reducing your own heart disease risk.
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