Leopards Can't Change Their Spots, But You Can Change Your Health!

Maybe you've heard the phrase about the leopard not being able to change its spots, but sometimes we apply that idea to people too, believing that people can never change...that we can never change! Have you ever thought- 'oh I'll always deal with that,' or 'that's just how I am'? It's true there are some things about ourselves we cannot change, but when it comes to our health, we are more in the driver's seat than we might think!

There can be all kinds of things that make you think feeling better is just not in the cards for you, or that making healthy changes is something that works for other people but not for you. One of the things that can really get in the way is the belief that your health is like the leopard's spots- something inherited that cannot be changed. This notion can especially creep in when thinking about your family’s health history.

At first it can seem like the illnesses in your family history are like those leopard spots for you, something you already wear and can't change. However, that’s not necessarily true! With a topic that can sometimes make you feel boxed in, we're going to explore how you can live outside the box and experience hope for your health! We’re going to uncover some truths and untruths about family medical history and look at how the topic can affect you, so you can hold onto what’s helpful and leave behind what might hinder your health journey.

Your Family's Health History Doesn't Have to Become Your Future

Family Health History Basics

Your family health history is a recorded collection of your closest relatives’ health conditions and diseases. Knowing this is mainly helpful for you to see patterns of illness in your family so you can identify, with your physician, what you are more at risk for experiencing. It's truly an important topic and I encourage you to learn more about your own family’s health history!

Check-in moment: "What do I know about my family's health history?"

Family Health History is Personal

Knowing your family health history is supposed to be only an added benefit to you, so that you can lower your personal health risk levels. But the reality is, this kind of knowledge can affect your feelings and perspectives too. When you relate to the concept of family health history, you aren't just processing the information like a computer. You're a human with thoughts and emotions about it all as well! And because family history is very personal, it can be an emotionally charged topic, especially if you’ve seen a close family member face a disease.

Sometimes you’re looking at information that feels removed from you, but sometimes it can feel very close and personal. Often, the closer you are in age to the person or the more shared life experience you’ve had with them, the more personal and emotionally charged it can feel. Watching your mom deal with something is different than hearing about the health problem of a great grandparent you didn’t know, isn’t it?

Check-in moment: "What do I feel about my family's health and my health?"

Watch What You Believe About Your Health

You might have been specifically told by a family member that you'll experience the same problems others have- that your health will be the same as your family member’s health. Or maybe you've had constructive, well-rounded discussions about it all. Depending on how the people around you have talked about it and addressed it, you may find yourself feeling trapped by your family health history instead of being empowered toward greater health.

It's not always the bold, in-your-face messages that shape your beliefs, sometimes it's the subtle message you read between the lines about your family health history that really impacts you. Maybe you've heard diabetes (or overweight/obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc.) 'runs' in your family- even the idea of that can give you the impression it's going to run into you too!

Let's look at another common "in-between-the-lines" situation. Think about your experiences with medical forms. If you've ever filled out a new patient form at a healthcare office, you've likely been asked to share your family history around certain illnesses or diseases. There's nothing wrong with health history forms, but recognize that whenever you're asked to think about family health history it's mainly in the context of the negative parts of your family's history (because the whole idea is to help address risk).

There's not going to be a box for your grandma's extra sharp memory, or your dad's 'normal' BMI, or your mom's healthy heart. So it's pretty easy to leave focused on your family's negative health history, thinking it could repeat itself in your health. The form doesn’t say “you will have these problems too,” but sometimes that’s the message you walk away with even still. And let’s be honest, that can leave you feeling a little helpless and maybe a little bit scared too.

You can't control what messages get to you, whether direct or indirect, but you can periodically take stock of how you've been affected by external messages about your health. Even in this blog post you'll find "check-in moments" to help you take that closer look. This is the kind of thing we don't do very much, so we more often end up trying to just move on either by fully accepting the negative message or by trying to ignore it.

You don't have to choose either extreme when you take the time to process what you believe about your health! You can choose what to hold onto and what to let go of. In the case of diabetes running in your family, that might look like holding onto the practice of being monitored and making healthy nutrition and lifestyle choices, while letting go of the suggestion that it's your fate to deal with diabetes.

It matters that you process what you believe about your health because it’s the concerns that go unaddressed that can become negative beliefs or fears that will slow you down. Guard your beliefs about how your family's health impacts your health and make sure they’re founded in scientific truth, not just family folklore. Your beliefs about your health will affect how you treat your body and determine whether you settle or pursue greater health.

Check-in moment: "What do I believe about my health? What have I heard that has affected what I believe about my health?"

The Role of Genetics

When it comes to family history, sometimes it’s easy to think- well they’re in my family, why wouldn’t I deal with the same issue? Genetics are real, but not everything is written in stone through the genetics you have. This is an enormous topic, and I can’t address every possibility here, but many of the prominent conditions we see in our country today- obesity, heart disease, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, hypertension- can have a genetic component to them but are also greatly impacted by lifestyle choices as well.

Do you remember the idea of "nature versus nurture" from school? When it comes to your health, it's affected by both your genetic makeup (nature) and by how you choose to take care of yourself (nurture). The reason we tend to think the family tie is a surefire indication that we’ll have the same issue too is because we can’t always see the difference between nature and nurture’s impact. And we don’t always know why someone suffers from a particular disease. Health issues can appear to be inevitable in a family, but they're often more flexible than they look.

Even in families, no one has exactly the same genetic makeup. What is shared is a portion of the genetics as well as the family’s unique culture of lifestyle habits and choices. A family tends to eat in similar ways, relate to physical activity in similar ways, and in general share basic lifestyle habits. Genetics is a real part of the equation, but lifestyle and health habits are too!

When looking closer at the genetics piece, there’s a field of study called epigenetics that basically looks at how your environment and health habits (nutrition and exercise) can affect how your DNA performs or ‘expresses’ itself. Healthier diet and exercise choices can cause positive shifts even down to that level, so there's even hope for your DNA! The point in sharing that is to amplify the message that your genetics don’t have to feel like a negative ‘health sentence’ to you. There is hope for your health and you can still make choices that will best support your health and many times change health outcomes for yourself!

Check in questions: "What do I know about my family's culture around nutrition, exercise, and other health habits?"

The Checked Box is the Starting Point, not the End Point

Knowledge of the disease history in your family is really only one piece of the puzzle about your own health! It's a valid piece of the puzzle, but just because it's there does not mean you're automatically fated to have the same health experience. We've talked a little bit about nature and nurture. So, the questions you consider shouldn't begin and end with 'did they have 'x' disease,' think also about these other factors to find out more about how it might relate to you:

Do you share close genetic makeup (mom/dad/sibling)?

How did your family member live? What was their lifestyle like?

Did they seek regular healthcare- both preventative and treatment based?

Do you get regular labwork done and other testing to help you monitor your health?

Do you monitor "risky" areas of your health with your physician?

Are you actively choosing the healthiest lifestyle for yourself in this season of your life?

I could list even more questions to think about, but the point is, there is a lot more to it beyond knowing you had/have a relative with a disease. Knowing about the incidence of the disease or condition is just a portion of the picture. So just remember that when you stare down another medical history form or when a family member tries to tell you you’ll have what so-and-so had.

Find Out More

Whether it was a health form or a conversation with family that left you feeling concerned about your own health, one of the best things you can do is to learn more. (And when I say learn more, I don’t mean google it, because that can get you in a far worse spot!) Find out more by talking things through with your healthcare provider.

Discussing your concerns is the first step. You can share with your physician what you currently understand, what you’re concerned about, and you can ask questions too. They can help you understand more about how a specific disease happens in someone’s body, what your specific risk level is, and what choices you can make to support your own health. When you get valuable feedback from your provider, you can leave feeling more grounded and more prepared on how to deal with what needs to be addressed.

When you hear about your family health history- instead of it seeing it like a book about your life that's already been written, you can see it as an unfinished book that you get to be part of writing!

You can Change Your Health!

Here's where I want to challenge you- know your family's medical history, when possible, but don't allow your knowledge of it to cause you to settle. Don't succumb to the temptation to just accept it as your fate and move on. You have more power to support your body and your health than that, so don't fall for the lie that there's nothing you can do to change things for yourself. Instead, use the information about your family history to provoke you to make choices that will best support your health both now and in the future!

When it comes to your overall health, your weight, and your body composition there are things you can do to support your body. If you have pre-diabetes, your weight is creeping up, you have borderline high blood pressure, and increasing cholesterol, you have an opportunity to make changes that can alter the direction of those specific health issues! Even if you have a confirmed diagnosis, you still have an opportunity to make changes and support your health.

No matter what, you can choose your habits surrounding how you take care of yourself. The habits you embrace can make a huge difference in your health outcomes as well as your overall quality of life.

Focus on what you can change, not what you can’t

Nutrition can Change Your Health

Hope for optimizing your health is often tied to making changes in your lifestyle choices. The everyday choices you make surrounding nutrition and physical activity (among other things) play a big role in your overall health. Nutrition is a powerful tool that can support your health as it relates to almost any issue. You can actively support your body into a healthier place.

As a dietitian, I get to see people experience positive changes in their health and quality of life and it's such a joy! Someone can go from being unsure it can happen for them to living out their goals, and that’s life-changing. Coming off of medications, or having the dosage lowered….life-changing. Feeling better in their body….life-changing. Seeing a normal A1c on their labwork…life-changing. If it can happen for other people, it can happen for you too!

I've also seen people feeling trapped in the box of their family history, believing there's no hope for something different for them. I completely understand how that belief sneaks in, which is why I wanted to share this post- to let you know there are more options for you outside that confining box. Whether you already have a diagnosis or not, there is hope for your health. If you're not sure where the hope is, I'd encourage you to explore that with a dietitian or other healthcare professional!

Don’t forget- their history doesn’t have to write your future!

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Weight loss is not the answer for everyone, however, there are often beneficial health changes that can happen for those experiencing obesity. Even a 5% loss of body weight can positively impact things like blood pressure, A1c, lipid levels, and insulin sensitivity! If you're interested in getting support for weight loss to optimize your health and to proactively manage your risk level associated with your family medical history, send me a chat or sign up for a free discovery call!

Get RD Nutrition is a virtual nutrition practice for residents of North Carolina- offering weight management support, right where you are!

Disclaimer:

This post is intended to highlight that there is often more hope for your health and more opportunity for you to positively impact your physical health than it might seem at first. This post is not intended as medical advice, or as a substitute for medical advice. Seek regular medical care from a qualified physician and review any and all concerns you have with them.