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Virginia Templet is the marketing director at Puritan Medical Products.
Thanksgiving is many things. It is a holiday, a feast, and a chance to connect with family members — or debate politics with them (respectfully). But it is also National Family Health History Day for a reason.
What does that mean? The idea of National Family Health History Day is to take advantage of a unique family gathering and discuss health history — the good and the bad. While discussing health with family members out of the blue may be awkward and uncomfortable, it is important to know how genetics factor into health outcomes and the health care decisions that need to happen as a result.
The first step to making informed health care decisions is to know about the past health issues that affected our parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. And there is no better opportunity to become informed than during Thanksgiving, when the family gathers.
Think about a standard physical. One of a doctor’s top priorities is to understand family history when it comes to health conditions like cancer or clinical depression, and then offer advice accordingly. For instance, Mass General Cancer Center says that one of the best ways to combat cancer is to first gain a better understanding of “hereditary cancer predisposition genes” that exist but are not always discussed.
Once we’re informed, we can take proactive action to protect our health. And we cannot underestimate the importance of testing, which is a key component of proactivity in public health.
Today, researchers have made more progress than ever before in revealing possible genetic linkages to specific diseases. Take Parkinson’s disease: Public health experts project that about 15 percent of people with Parkinson’s have a family history of the condition, and family-linked cases can result from genetic mutations in a group of genes. While the impact of genetic changes or mutations on disease risk is still not fully understood, researchers are making strides.
One reason for greater understanding is proper testing. Researchers increasingly rely on testing swabs for the sampling of genetic material. While blood is a common sample type, research now points to buccal cells, which are found in the cheeks and lips, being nearly 100 percent concordant with genetic material from blood. This means that flocked and foam swabs, like Puritan makes, provide clinicians with a viable alternative for collecting buccal samples from the inside of a person’s cheek that are extremely reliable.
Today’s swabs are remarkable, allowing the genetic sampling of human beings and animals of all ages. Another example is the field of pharmacogenomics, or the study of how genes affect someone’s response to drugs. Adverse drug reactions lead to hundreds of thousands of serious health episodes and tens of thousands of deaths in the United States, making it all the more important for physicians to prescribe medications that are genetically suited for patients.
There are more than 50 psychiatric medications on the market for mental health disorders alone — from depression to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The right drug matters immensely, as does the right dose. Getting it wrong can be fatal.
Pharmacogenomics helps physicians serve their patients best, in large part because buccal swabs are fast, non-invasive, and high-yielding for cell collection. The hope of pharmacogenomics is to help people get on the right medications more quickly, and that hope rests on genetic research through testing.
National Family Health History Day is an important reminder for us all to recognize the role of genetics in our daily lives. The genes of a grandparent can impact the health of a child three generations down the line, so there is no excuse not to understand our predecessors and their specific health outcomes. Where one parent’s health may have gone wrong could give their child the requisite information to take their health more seriously and live a more healthy life.
This Thanksgiving, let’s enjoy the family time. Let’s discuss politics civilly. But, above all else, let’s all find a few moments to talk about health history.
