Researching Your Family Medical History

Researching your family tree and your ancestry can be fun. But researching your family medical history is more than just fun, it can be very important. People research their family medical history for many different reasons, but these are the most common and most important reasons to find out more about your family medical history.

Pregnancy - When you are pregnant or before you get pregnant it can be important to research your genealogy. By finding out about your ancestor's you can find out if there are any medical conditions that you might pass on to your baby. If you know what medical conditions run in your family, you can let your doctor know so you can get any prenatal screening tests that would be important for you.

Preventing diseases - If you research your family medical history, you can know what screening tests you should get and what diseases you should check for. If you know cancer runs in your family, you can start getting screening tests such as mammograms earlier.

Diagnosing diseases - Sometimes doctors don't know exactly where to look when they are trying to diagnose your illness. If you know certain diseases have ran in your family, your doctor can be sure to check for them. There are often overlooked diseases because they are rare, but if you have a family history of them your doctor should know.

Preventative treatments - Depending on the diseases that you have found in your lineage, and what relatives had them your doctor might recommended certain preventive treatments. If you are at a high risk for some diseases there are medications you can take that will lower your risk of them.

Know what to expect for your children - When you have children it is important to know if there are any things you should watch for. Anyone who has had kids knows that as a parent you worry about every little things that happens to your child. When you know your family medical history it lets you know if there is any reason to worry about certain things.

It can be hard to research your family medical history if you don't know where to look. You should always start with any relatives that are alive, it's always easier. You can then start to research the other relatives. Here are some tips that should help you get started.

Respect privacy - Many people will have a hard time sharing family history with you. Be sure to make people feel comfortable, and respect their privacy. To make sure everything remains private remove names from your medical family tree. Your doctor needs to know the diseases but does not need to know anyone's names.

Check birth certificates and death records - This is a good way of starting research on ancestors that are no longer around. This will often give you the cause of death and the age of death.

Include all the information you can- If the relatives are still alive be sure to include as much medical information as you can. Eating habits, exercise, and smoking habits are very important to know.

AMA Family History- AMA Family History

This is a great place to start. This gives you tons of great tips on researching, and also lets you know all the important reasons to research your family medical history.

Adopted - Even if you are adopted don't give up. There are lots of resources out there for people that are adopted. You can often get your adoption records unsealed if you need it for a medical reason.

Hopefully these tips will help you get started with your medical family tree. I hope this article showed that family trees can not only be fun, but can be very important.