When you examine your family tree, does it appear to make any difference whether or not

[Mike 03]

you smoke?

you drink?

you are overweight or obese?

your eating habits, one way or the other, are poor or extremely healthy?

you exercise a lot or live a sedentary life?

were your parents farmers who got sick?

did your parents drink water from a well and become sick?

can you think of anything, environmentally, that seemed to adversely affect the health of someone you loved, more than simply the apparent family history you have?

Can you any difference that appears to matter, that motivates you one way or the other, to make an effort to be particularly healthy, or does it appear not to matter in the context of your family history/tree?

I'm curious as hell about this entire issue.

[WolverineDG]

1. Up to my parents' generation, my family was long-lived

Most of my grandparents & great-grandparents made it to their 80s, all the way back to Colonial times. The one ancestor who didn't make it past 40 was killed in the Civil War. My parents' generation didn't do so well, thanks to drinking, smoking, bad habits.

dg

[Nikia]

2. My parents and grandparents did not drink

It was not until I was an adult though that I learned that my great grand father on my paternal grand mother's side was an alcoholic. She said though that back then people didn't talk much about that. I don't drink much because when I do I continue to drink until it adversely affects me, creating bad things in me. I wonder if he was the only alcoholic. I wonder if they all would have been alcoholics if they weren't culturually abstinent.
My family has both thin and fat people. Some of my ancestors were fat even in the 1800s. It did seem to run in families. I think that genetically I tend thin to average, at least until I am older (menopausal)
Generally, members of my family were active and that sort of thing was encouraged.
Despite being active and not eating horribly, 3 out of 4 of my grandparents got diabetes. They all improved their diet in response. I grew up believung that was the normal thing to do, but evidently many people don't.
I guess overall, my family through both environmental influence and genetics has made me generally healthy.

[REP]

3. Both sides are riddled with T1 and T2 diabetics and very old people

My family line tends to succumb to: URIs (we don't breathe so well) or age-related heart disease, despite both maternal and paternal lines being hotbeds of T1 and T2 diabetes.

[femmocrat]

4. Yes... those factors make a difference in my habits.

We have certain diseases that "run in the family". I really try to eat properly and exercise to avoid them. I hope genetics doesn't trump prevention!

My dad smoked and had respiratory problems. >>> I don't smoke.
My mom was overweight and ate all the wrong foods. She never exercised. She developed diabetes. >>> I eat healthy and exercise (but not enough!).
Both sides of the families had several alcoholics. >>> I don't drink.

They both had high blood pressure, which I do not. He had two heart attacks (died from the second one). She had a heart attack, a stroke, and then died of complications from diabetes.

Not sure about environmental factors. That doesn't seem to be influential, although my dad said that the men he knew who worked in the mines all died from black lung disease. I don't have any data on that, though.

[MedleyMisty]

5. Most of the women on both sides of my family get to be pretty old

except the one aunt who smoked. She died of lung cancer.

My father also smoked, and was developing emphysema when he died of a heart attack when I had just turned seven.

Their mother is still alive and mentally alert in her 90s. My other grandmother lived to be in her late 80s and her sister is still alert and kicking and living on her own and traveling around the US.

So in general, the women of my family seem to do all right as long as they don't make themselves sick. As for the men - there's not really a pattern as far as I know, except they seem to die of heart attacks. My father's father died in his 80s before I was born; my mother's father died of a heart attack six months after Daddy (yeah, I remember watching my mother having to be helped down the steps of the church after his funeral) but I'm not sure how old he was.

So I don't smoke - or drink, but that's more because alcohol tastes awful to me and I hate the idea of not being in control of myself than family stuff. Although it may be a factor that my family never introduced it to me. Huh - I never thought about that before but the only adults who ever drank habitually around me were my mother's boyfriends.

I have started exercising and trying to eat healthier lately, but that was motivated more by being scared by the frequent heartburn after eating fried and greasy stuff than family issues.

[jmm]

6. I've always said if I make it past my 40's

I'm good at least until I'm 80 since with very few exceptions on either side of my family nobody passes away between those ages. Life style does tend to make a difference when it comes to quality of life but not always.

[nickinSTL]

7. Got to say...I know a lot of my family tree...

but I have NO idea about their environmental health.

I eat a good diet, exercise and take care of myself because none of my grandparents lived to a great age - don't know how much their diet or other environmental factors caused it, but...

I'm also seeing the shape my parents are in. Some of that is just bad luck, in a sense, some is related to things they just didn't know about until they already had problems.

In any case, I know my dad had a heart attack when he was just 7 years older than I am now. I'm doing everything I can to avoid that. I eat better, don't smoke, have a low-stress career (at least for now), and exercise. I'm on meds for my blood pressure - so it's under control, and for cholesterol, which has improved significantly as a result.

I'm still overweight, but working on it, and I figure I'm in a much better position than I would be if I wasn't aware of my risks. I expect I'll have a heart attack eventually...seems highly likely, but I'm doing what I can to avoid, or at least postpone it.

[CreekDog]

8. My grandfather who basically had one lung after WW2 outlived almost all of my relatives

and all of the ones that smoked.

though people in my family live a long time.

as my grandfather said when he was 85 (did he know he was quoting Mickey Mantle?) "If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself" :rofl:

[Lars39]

9. Cancer is rampant on one side of my family.

Nobody has died from anything but cancer of one kind or another, and it seems to be occurring in family members at a younger age with each generation. :( One of my mom's oncologists told her that the county she lived in has a natural heavy metal concentration that contributes to high cancer rates.

[yellowdogintexas]

10. my mom's maternal family was riddled with cancer. It didn't run in the family,

it GALLOPED!!/ Great grandfather and 3 of the 4 children all had really awful cancers.

Of the 7 cousins in my mom's generation, only two had CA and one of them was my mom..a tiny nodule in the breast that had not spread at all. So far, none has shown up in our generation that we know of.

My other grandmother's family only had one cancer victim in her 7 siblings, most lived well into their 80's and Granny lived to be 102. I am hoping I have her gene pool. She didn't have old age dementia or Alzheimer's either.

She didn't smoke or drink, was heavy in her middle years then lost the weight and kept it off; she had about 35 years without all that weight.

I grew up in tobacco country and all the shit they have to fool with to get that crop to market has to have impacted the population. There seems to be a lot of cancer amongst the farmers.

We had a well but got typhoid shots every year. You never know what is upstream from your well, esp in Kentucky with all the sinkholes.

One of my aunts had typhoid during WWI and all her hair fell out from the fever.

[raccoon]

11. Lots of times if somebody had a drinking/drug problem, it was just swept up under the rug.

I mean, for instance, if somebody's g-grandfather was an alcoholic. Chances are now nobody will remember that. And it isn't the kind of thing that's recorded in the family Bible.

[bikebloke]

12. The smokers are guaranteed cancer.

Or double your money back with my kin. Though I had a great aunt who smoked like a chimney who made to her 80's. The others joined the ancestors in their 50's and 60's. And a couple individuals (non-smokers) made it into their 90's. I take after the long timers.

[hunter]

13. My family tree is full of nuts.

All their health issues were symptoms of autistic things, psychotic things, personality disorders, depression, and various other sorts of crazy. The most common crash and burn is alcohol and cigarettes, and following that, a whole list of freakish things like losing arguments with horses, or vanishing into the wilderness, or demanding inappropriate medical treatments from quack doctors. Anyone who escapes those fates tends to live a very long time and become an increasingly bizarre burden to more functional members of the family. My mom says it's good she has lots of kids and grandkids because when she's very old and crazy we can shuffle her among us and then come up with a good alibi for whichever one of us ends up throwing her in a volcano. That's probably a better way to go than dying in a nursing home brawl, and other people don't get hurt. My mom and dad first met and fell in love partly because they had something in common -- parents who were quite literally mad and not entirely functional in ordinary society and entirely dysfunctional at home. In a lot of ways my parents had to raise themselves. My kids have been blessed with normal grandparents. My own grandparents and great grandparents were scary and died fighting their own demons.

[TreasonousBastard]

14. All the women made it to their '80s, none of the men...

except me, made it to their 60s. Everyone got cancer, except those who died from a heart attack.

This doesn't count a few here and there who were murdered, hanged, lost at sea, or whatever.

Treasonous, the Immortal.