Heart disease family history

Written on November 13, 2009 – 11:43 am | by Barry |

Heart disease family history

It is understandable that you may be concerned if you have a heart disease family history. If one or more of your realtives have had heart problems, especially at an earlier age than you might expect, then this is something you should look at closely.

To determine if you have a heart disease family history requires you to look at your relatives and ask the following three questions:

• Do you have one or more family members whose first sign of a heart condition occurred prematurely. By prematurely we mean at age age before you would expect this to happen in the general population which is different for men and women. It is important to consider the earliest age for the relative or relatives since it makes a difference if they have a thrombosis at say 35 but went on to 60 before having a heart attack. Heart conditions can have many symptoms including cardiovascular surgery, peripheral vascular disease (PVD), heart attack or stroke.

• How near a relation are those that had heart problems. A distant cousin is much less significant to estimating your risk than a parent, brother or sister.

• How many relatives would fit into these to questions.

Having looked at your relatives you may want to use this information to get a more considered view as to whether you have a heart disease family history. As you might imagine each family differs in the number, ages and heart problems that may have occurred and there is no simple formula that can be applied in all cases.

A good suggestion is record your data and to draw a family tree, sometimes called a pedigree drawing. Lets look at this example:

Lets say you are Peter in this family. Peter is marked with the black arrow. The same works just as well for women. Peter is 48 years old and has an brother Bret and an sister Ann. Their parents are Henry and Rachel. If you look at the colored boxes in Henry’s square and the key above you can see he had peripheral vascular disease (PVD) at 45, a heart attack at 48 and shortly after had cardiovascular surgery. He died aged 50. Martha who is Henry’s mother, died from a heart attack aged 49. Peter’s mother Rachel has shown no symptoms of heart disease but her father Ralph had a stroke at 79.

On the family tree you see that Peter, Henry and Rachel have diabetes. Peter and others have hypertension (high blood pressure). Peter also has high cholesterol and his body mass index (BMI) of 26 shows he is overweight.

Although this drawing was done mainly for Peter it is also useful to his brother, sister and and their children.

If Peter were to show this drawing to his doctor he or she would be able to beter judge Peter’s risk for heart disease that comes from this family history.

This drawing was produced using the MyHeartRisk heart risk assessment program which is a simple online way for you to enter data about yourself and your family members. Not only can you print your family tree you also get risk charts and a detailed personal report with health recommendations

If you have the feeling that your heart disease family history needs follow up then why not get started.

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This is part of the MyHeartRisk (My Heart Risk) series on how to prevent heart disease including:

• Family history of heart disease
• How is your heart like your car?
• My heart risk score
• Your heart disease risk calculator and report writer
• Heart attack risk
• BMI and heart disease

MyHeartRisk mission: To help users better understand their personal heart disease risk factors and how to advocate for themselves with their health care providers for a more healthy and potentially longer life. To ask the question ‘What is my heart risk’ and get not only a personalized response but to have a partner on the road to improved health and longevity.

Join our MyHeartRisk online family by taking our newsletter then we can keep you informed and to get you started you will receive a free ebook
‘Preventing your heart disease’

Take the time to investigate your heart disease family history while you still have time to talk to your family members.

Family heart disease

Written on November 10, 2009 – 10:02 pm | by Barry |

Family heart disease

You may have heard the expressions “heart disease runs in the family” or “they suffer with family heart disease” or “they have a heart disease family history”, or similar statements of concern, well if any of these generalities applies to your family then this should be of interest to you, your brothers and sisters (siblings), your children and other of your family members.

We take it as understood that family traits such as tallness, hair color etc. can be passed down from our parents, grandparents and further back. These family features are passed down to us through the genes we inherit from our parents who in turn inherited similar genes them from their parents.

Some forms of heart disease are influenced by our genes. Scientists have only worked out the details of a few of these genes. Therefore, at present, there is no easy test which gives the full picture. We all inherit some predispositions for certain chronic diseases. An inherited predispositions may not actually cause a problem on their own but when the person is exposed to some specific environmental condition, the combination can be serious. For example, if we inherited a predisposition to premature heart disease because our body was not able to handle cholesterol adequately and at the same time our diet was such that we ate high cholesterol containing foods, the combination of these two factors would be much worse than if we only had one of the risks. Having a diet which causes high cholesterol is bad by itself but is much worse for someone who has the additional risk factor of an inherited predisposition.

So how do we know we might have family heart disease and have inherited a cardiovascular disease problem. With current science it is not possible to get a yes/no answer so for now the best we can do is to look at our family history and see what has happened with our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc. with relation to heart disease. It is a fact of life that we all have to die of something and one of the most likely causes of death in the modern world is heart disease. So having one or both parents die of heart disease in itself may not be significant.

However there are several things to look for in a family tree that can be a warning for you to look into this more closely as part of your heart disease prevention measures.

• Firstly how old was the family member when they first had an event that was related to the health of their heart. For example did this person survive a heart attack at 45 and then lived to be 65.

• Secondly how close a relative are they to you. Parents, brothers, sisters and your children are called first degree relatives. Your grandparents, aunts and uncles are called second degree relatives and your cousins are third degree relatives. The closer the relative with a heart problem is to you the more significant this is.

• Thirdly how many of your relatives have had heart problems.

Just because you may find no family heart disease as there are no close family members with heart disease problems this does not necessarily put you in the clear. There can be a number of reasons for this including the faulty memories of surviving family members, miss diagnosis of a medical event or reason for death or your inheritance of a new strain of heart condition or something else entirely.

Accurately interpreting any family history of heart disease requires medical training and experience. Even some general practice physicians do not have the knowledge and experience to recognize a heart disease family history, although they may not admit to this.

If you are concerned about what your family heart disease means to you, your siblings, your children or any other family members then you should look into this further and get a heart risk assessment.

Ask yourself the question is my family’s history of heart disease a concern to me

If you have had heart problems at an early age then you should make this clear to other family members as this family medical history is important especially to your children and grandchildren.

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This is part of the MyHeartRisk (My Heart Risk) series including:

• BMI and heart disease
• How is your heart like your car?
• My heart risk score
• Your heart disease risk calculator and report writer
• Heart attack risk

MyHeartRisk mission: To help users better understand their personal heart disease risk factors and how to advocate for themselves with their health care providers for a more healthy and potentially longer life. To ask the question ‘What is my heart risk’ and get not only a personalized response but to have a partner on the road to improved health and longevity.

Join our MyHeartRisk online family by taking our newsletter then we can keep you informed and to get you started you will receive a free ebook
‘Preventing your heart disease’

Why not take the time to see if family heart disease applies to your family

Family history of heart disease

Written on November 10, 2009 – 1:15 pm | by Barry |

Family history of heart disease

If you think you have a heart disease family history then what you will read here is important to you.

First let us look more closely at what the medical profession consider as a family history of heart disease. There are three areas to look for:

• Is there at least one family member who has shown signs of premature heart problems. Premature is not well defined and would be different for a male and female family member. In this case we can consider premature to mean the family member’s age when they had their first symptom of heart disease was younger than would normally be expected. Heart problems can include stroke, heart attack, peripheral vascular disease (PVD) or cardiovascular surgery such as a bypass or stint.

• Is this relative, or relatives if more than one, a near relative to you. How near a relative is to you is easily measured as follows: Parents, brothers and sisters and your children are the nearest of your relatives. Grandparents together with aunts and uncles are the next nearest. Cousins are the next nearest and anyone else in the family is less significant for consideration here.

• How many of your family members can you count in the above categories.

Using these ways of looking at your family history of heart disease you can see if you might have a concern that requires further investigation. Since every family is different with some family members having different heart problems and at different ages it is difficult to get a simple yes no answer to having a heart disease family history.

One way to get an overview is to draw a family tree or what the medics call a pedigree drawing. Lets look at this example:

Consider yourself to be the person Peter in this family. You can find Peter with the black arrow pointer. The principal works just as well for females. Peter is aged 48 and has an older brother Bret and an older sister Ann. Peter, Bret and Ann have parents Henry and Rachel. Henry had heart problems that started with peripheral vascular disease at 45, he suffered a heart attack at 48 and shortly afterwards had cardiovascular surgery. He lived for another 2 years and died aged 50. Henry’s mother Martha died from a heart attack aged 49. Fortunately Peter’s mother Rachel has so far not shown symptoms of heart disease although her father Ralph had a stroke aged 79.

The family tree also records the medical conditions of the family members, for example Peter, Henry and Rachel have diabetes. Peter, Henry, Martha, Rachel and Bret have hypertension (high blood pressure). Peter has cholesterol problems and is overweight with a body mass index (BMI) of 26.

Although this family tree has been drawn up for Peter’s benefit it is also useful to Bret and Ann and their children Joyce, Susan and John.

When Peter shows this family tree to his doctor or healthcare advisor they will be able to help Peter to better understand his family history of heart disease because most of the information is included without the need for Peter to go away and talk to his relatives.

MyHeartRisk has a simple way for you to enter data about yourself and your family members to be able to print out your own family tree as seen in this example. This is called a risk assessment and not only will you be able to print your family tree you also get risk charts and a detailed personal report with health recommendations

If you have the feeling that your family history of heart disease needs investigating then here is the right tool for you. You will look back and see that it was worth it and hopefully you will be able to continue looking back for many more years to come.

————————————————————————————————

This is part of the MyHeartRisk (My Heart Risk) series on how to prevent heart disease including:

• Family history of heart disease
• How is your heart like your car?
• My heart risk score
• Your heart disease risk calculator and report writer
• Heart attack risk
• BMI and heart disease

MyHeartRisk mission: To help users better understand their personal heart disease risk factors and how to advocate for themselves with their health care providers for a more healthy and potentially longer life. To ask the question ‘What is my heart risk’ and get not only a personalized response but to have a partner on the road to improved health and longevity.

Join our MyHeartRisk online family by taking our newsletter then we can keep you informed and to get you started you will receive a free ebook
‘Preventing your heart disease’

Take the time to investigate your family history of heart disease while you still have time!