Feeling Ill? Don’t Self Diagnose

Posted on: 6 July 2016

If one or both of your parents suffer from heart disease, you may be greatly concerned for their health and well-being. While you are rightly concerned for their health and curious about their heart-disease treatment options and choices, you may also want to think about what you can learn about taking care of your health from what your parents are experiencing now. Get to know some of the facts that you may be able to learn from your parents' heart disease and treatments so that you can take better care of your health now and in the future.

Your Extended Family Health History

When your parents were diagnosed with heart disease, their doctors likely delved into their family health histories, including that of their parents, grandparents, and siblings. Doing this may have given the doctors ideas about risk factors and reasons behind the development of the heart disease.

You should take note of this information as well because it will be helpful to you in the future. If you know your own family medical history, particularly when it comes to cardiovascular health, you will be better able to monitor and manage your health. For example, if you know that your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents all suffered from high blood pressure or high cholesterol, you could take early steps to manage and monitor yours. The more family history information you have, the better.

You Can Learn From Your Parents' Self-Care Mistakes

While you can learn about heart disease and the factors that can contribute to it from a book, it is different to see those risk factors play out in real life. Learning from the mistakes and missteps your parents have made in life can seriously impact what you do in your own life.

For example, if your parents let themselves get out of shape and stopped working out when you were young, you can now see how that is impacting them later in life. This can serve as good motivation for you to get and stay in shape when you are still a young adult so that you have less of a risk of developing heart disease later in life.

You Can Learn about the Available Treatment Options

Of course, even if you take great care of yourself, if you have a genetic predisposition, you may still develop heart disease at some point in your life. Spending time with your parents as they go through their heart-disease treatments, including angioplasty, prescription blood pressure and cholesterol medications, and even bypass surgery, can help you get a good idea of what to expect in your future.

Now that you know a few of the things that you can learn from your parents' heart disease, you can be sure that you take care of your health now and in the future.