Is the disease hereditary?

Perhaps everyone has noticed that diseases are getting younger, and many diseases of the elderly are also affecting young people. Of course, illness is definitely closely related to the work and rest schedule and life rules of young people, but is it also related to genetics? Let's talk about it today.

01. Can diseases be “inherited”?

Let me first complain: Actually, it is not easy for people doing scientific research.

Scientific research does not allow us to have emotional tendencies in academics, so we force ourselves not to consider joy, anger, sorrow, or happiness. As a result, over time, many contents, in our eyes, are just cold numbers. For example, the incidence and mortality of various diseases. However, sometimes, when I see netizens inviting me to answer some disease-related questions, I still feel uncomfortable.

Let's get back to the point. The disease inheritance I want to talk about today is actually a bit unreasonable to describe with the word "inheritance". Because it is not similar to our traditional inheritance of "dragons give birth to dragons and phoenixes give birth to phoenixes". It is not a special genetic disease, but the "inheritance" of common diseases.

This inheritance is a kind of tendency inheritance, or it can be said to be a kind of risk factor inheritance.

This is what we found when processing various data. Many diseases, especially chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc., have very significant family clustering problems. The performance is that in a family, almost all direct descendants have a higher probability of suffering from the disease than the normal population. Generally speaking, these diseases include but are not limited to the following:

Chronic diseases: cancer; coronary heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis

Physical signs: blood pressure, cholesterol

The reasons are complex and include external factors and genetic factors. Let's briefly talk about them below.

02. Family history, a reason that everyone is familiar with

External causes mainly include: living habits and living environment. For example, if a family likes to eat salty food, then the proportion of hypertension in this family will definitely be high.

The internal cause is genetic factors, that is, gene problems. Many diseases are complex diseases, determined by multiple genes, and each gene is very large (basically the smaller ones are several thousand bases, and the larger ones are hundreds of thousands of bases). Many families will have some mutations, and this mutation may not directly cause the disease, but it will increase the risk.

Therefore, in the hospital, responsible doctors will definitely ask about your family medical history.

At the same time, please pay attention to your family to see if there is a similar phenomenon. If so, you must pay more attention to it. Regular physical examinations, focusing on certain items (for example, families with high blood pressure must pay attention to blood pressure values).

**At the same time, pay attention to certain symptoms. **Most indicators are statistical data, such as the normal range of high blood pressure is 90-140. This range is very large, and you cannot think that 90 before and 139 now are both normal. In fact, for you, this is already very abnormal because your blood pressure has increased by 55%. Therefore, you must read the physical examination form yourself and compare it with the data of previous years.

Finally, let’s talk about some things that we think are good for your health.

1. Attitude is crucial. An optimistic attitude can enhance immunity, which has been studied.

2. Balanced diet Generally speaking, a balanced diet is very important for modern people. It is recommended to ensure the amount of vegetables and grains, and try to eat less high-fat foods, which will increase the possibility of cardiovascular disease. Low salt is also necessary.

3. Smoke less, as it is a clear first-class carcinogen

4. Exercise moderately

5. Control your weight

I wish you all good health