As medical knowledge continues to grow, we have found that for many conditions
there are familial, or hereditary, factors as to whether you are going to have
the same problems. Pity those who are orphans - they never get the ‘advance
warning’ that children with both sets of parents get.
Of course, we all have much to thank our parents for. Just
letting us grow up for starters. However, heredity is one of the ‘clues’ to your
health in the future, and what you can do to enjoy a long, lively and healthy
one. This is really where ‘thanks Mum and Dad’ comes in. One problem of being an
orphan is that it leaves the person with no idea as to what ailments are going
to befall them. Dad might have legged it or ‘fled the scene’, but did he live to
tell the tale when he was 60?
With the increasing research into genetics, we are able to
map out our likely futures and can predict such ailments as diabetes, epilepsy
and other neurological problems like Huntington’s Chorea and Alzheimer’s
Disease, some cancers such as breast, ovarian, lower bowel, prostate, skin and
testicular, heart attacks, blood pressure problems, certain blood diseases like
Sickle Cell anemia and so the list goes on.
However, you do not need to have multi-million baht
examinations done on your DNA to see where you are headed, all you need to do is
to start asking the older family members about your inheritance. Not the money -
your genetic inheritance in the health stakes.
Have you ever wondered why the questionnaire for life
insurance asks whether any close member of your family has ever suffered from
diabetes, epilepsy and other ailments and then also asks you to write down how
old your parents or brothers and sisters were when they died, and what they died
from? All that they, the insurance companies, are doing is finding out the
relative likelihood (or ‘risk’) of your succumbing early to an easily
identifiable disease. This does not need a postgraduate Masters degree in rocket
science. It needs a cursory application of family history.
If either of your parents had diabetes, your elder brother
has diabetes, your younger brother has diabetes and your cousin has diabetes,
what are the odds on your getting (or already having) diabetes? Again this does
not need Einstein. The answer is pretty damn high! And yet, I see families like
this, where the individual members are totally surprised and amazed when they
fall ill, go to hospital, and diabetes is diagnosed.
It does not really take very much time over a family lunch to
begin to enquire about one’s forebears. After five minutes it will be obvious if
there is some kind of common medical thread running through your family. That
thread may not necessarily be life threatening, but could be something like
arthritis for example.
Look at it this way - your future is being displayed by your
family’s past. This could be considered frightening, when your father, his
brother and your grandfather all died very early from heart attacks. Or, this
could be considered as life saving, if it pushes you towards looking at you own
cardiac health and overcoming an apparently disastrous medical history.
This is where careful application of family history can be
life saving. If there is a common thread, then go looking for it. This is the
advantage that you get provided you are not an orphan. You know what to look for
before it becomes a problem. Going back to the family with diabetes, what should
the younger members do? Well, if it were me, I would be having my blood sugar
checked at least once a year from the age of 20. Any time I had reason to visit
the doctor in between, I would also ask to have the level checked. We are
talking about a very inexpensive test that could literally save you millions of
baht in the future, as well as giving you a better quality of life, and a longer
one.
Ask around the dinner table today and plan to check your
medical future tomorrow. It’s called a ‘Check-up’!