Personal Health
The current state of emerging human diseases has been associated with several factors, such as lifestyles and other reckless human activities. However, family history has not ceased to be a cause of most ailments that are genetically passed from one generation to another. The set of genes that make up a human body are inherited from the parents, and thus, family history can be effectively used to assess the health risk facing a certain individual. The lack of sufficient information concerning the history of my family health has been the reason behind the problems facing our family. Schizophrenia has been affecting several members of our family, and the hereditary nature of the condition has seen most of the family members inheriting the condition from parents. The fact that most factors responsible for causing diseases can be managed by seeking relevant medical advice and medication has pushed for the undertaking of this study. Family history and genetic composition cannot be changed like lifestyle, although knowing the relationship between family history and the cause of various diseases and disorders can be used to minimize the risk of getting such diseases.
Lifestyles have been blamed for the increased rate of disease and disorder outbreak. The relationship between lifestyles and diseases involves the intake of substances such as food and drinks, or even the activities that an individual may engage in. The current research on schizophrenia has been done to ascertain the evolution of candidate genes responsible for schizophrenia biology. Lifestyles have been particularly associated with increasing the risk of impacting candidate genes for schizophrenia. Therefore, individuals have been trying to improve their lifestyles in a bid to reduce the risk of becoming ill. However, some individuals have been easily giving up on the attempt to improve their lifestyles after realizing that their genetic profiles and family history are responsible for the high risk of acquiring the schizophrenia condition. The blame should, however, not be entirely placed on genetic modifications because lifestyles can also be responsible for genetic modifications that either increase or reduce the risk of acquiring the schizophrenia condition. The relationship between genetic structures and external factors that include lifestyles has been proven through most current theories (Kavanagh, Tansey, O’Donovan & Owen, 2015). Therefore, the lifestyles should not be ignored even in situations where the risk of developing schizophrenia is associated with family history and genetic modifications.
Lifestyles play a significant role in changing the gene composition and hence raising or lowering the risk of acquiring schizophrenia. In the case of schizophrenia, the relationship between lifestyles and disorders may not be evident. However, parents may be in a position to determine the risk of their child having advanced stages of schizophrenia disorder at the time of birth. Therefore, individuals always can manage the transformation of genes depending on the kind of lifestyles that they lead. The choice of the lifestyles to lead should be based on the desire to minimize any risk of contradicting diseases, and family history should not be the reason why an individual chooses harmful lifestyles.
Family history is one of the most important factors that should be considered when assessing the risk that an individual faces. Most diseases have been associated with having hereditary characteristics and being beyond the control of the victims (Schmidt-Kastner, Esquivel, Steinbusch & Rutten, 2012). The knowledge that our family history is associated with the hereditary schizophrenia disorder has helped in attempting to minimize the risk of the condition to the newborns as well as the healthy family members. The knowledge has been essential in research on the environmental factors that might be responsible for the high risk of schizophrenia disorder. For example, distress and obstetric complications are responsible for the high risk of schizophrenia and thus, family members have taken relevant measures to stay away from such environmental factors. Therefore, family history works in collaboration with other factors to increase or decrease the risk of contracting certain diseases. Also, family members share several traits, such as genes, behaviors, and even beliefs. The behaviors and beliefs shared by family members are crucial in defining the kind of lifestyles led by members of a certain family. The sharing of genes means that family members can inherit the schizophrenia condition from their ancestors and that it is passed down from generation to generation with the effects being more evident in some members than in others.
The knowledge of one’s family history may be hard to obtain. For instance, knowing the number of people in our family who had developed the schizophrenia disorder was a hard task. The information on individuals’ illnesses in a family is not always kept for future reference. Also, an individual could be in the early stages of the schizophrenia disorder and thus unaware of the condition. Additionally, most family members do not reveal their medical conditions unless a need arises for the family members to know.
Additionally, some family members have died at young ages before developing the schizophrenia conditions hence keeping the information on the condition unavailable for most of the family members. The lack of knowledge on our family history has been a challenge where an individual is suffering from the condition, and the real cause of the condition cannot be identified. Individuals have since been encouraged to try their level best to gather the available information on the family health history since such information may be useful in future reference.
Genetic compositions have, in most cases, been associated with the risk of certain conditions. Some conditions, such as schizophrenia have a nature of affecting people with a certain type of genetic structure (Farrell et al. 2015). The inheritance of genetic variations throughout a family is associated with both direct and indirect contribution to the development of the schizophrenia among the family members. Some individuals may be lucky to inherit genetic structures that lower the risk of developing schizophrenia while others inherit genetic structures that increase the risk of acquiring the condition. However, the advancement of technology has been a breakthrough in managing the condition. Additionally, the fact that an individual is born in our family does not mean that the individual will get schizophrenia. The knowledge of the genetic compositions may, in most cases help individuals to significantly lower the risk of developing the conditions associated with their genes. For example, the family members have chosen to be cautious with the lifestyle to choose. The environmental factors that lead to higher risks of schizophrenia have been put on the spot by the family members.
The hereditary nature of genetic conditions is not only associated with internal factors, but also external factors and schizophrenia is not exceptional. The common belief that science has put in the minds of several individuals is that hereditary conditions are passed down through birth, where parents pass their genes to the children. The claim is true since a higher percentage of hereditary conditions pass down the generation through the parents. However, other factors play a significant role in explaining the passing of conditions from one generation to another in a given family. The behaviors and beliefs are some of the factors that may lead to a dominance of a certain condition in a family without the genetic structures being involved. For example, a family that has been founded on beliefs that praise smoking as an acceptable lifestyle will most likely have several cases of cancer patients. Behaviors are easily passed down from generation to generation since children are more likely to copy the behaviors of their parents. Therefore, some conditions are found to be dominant in certain families’ history due to the behaviors and beliefs and not necessarily from genetic modifications.
In sum, personal health is affected by several factors that include family history, lifestyle, and genetic compositions. The experience with schizophrenia in our family has been crucial in bringing out the relationship between family history, lifestyle and genetic composition. Family history and genetic composition cannot be changed like lifestyle, although knowing the relationship between family history and the cause of various diseases and disorders can be used to minimize the risk of getting such diseases. The choice of the lifestyles to lead should be based on the desire to minimize any risk of contradicting diseases, and family history should not be the reason why an individual leads to harmful lifestyles.
References
Farrell, M. S., Werge, T., Sklar, P., Owen, M. J., Ophoff, R. A., O’Donovan, M. C., … & Sullivan, P. F. (2015). Evaluating historical candidate genes for schizophrenia. Molecular psychiatry, 20(5), 555.
Kavanagh, D. H., Tansey, K. E., O’Donovan, M. C., & Owen, M. J. (2015). Schizophrenia genetics: emerging themes for a complex disorder. Molecular psychiatry, 20(1), 72.
Schmidt-Kastner, R., Van Os, J., Esquivel, G., Steinbusch, H. W. M., & Rutten, B. P. F. (2012). An environmental analysis of genes associated with schizophrenia: hypoxia and vascular factors as interacting elements in the neurodevelopmental model. Molecular psychiatry, 17(12), 1194.