Did you know that certain diseases can be heredity? If anyone in your family has had medical conditions like diabetes, heart disease, or cancer, you may have an increased risk of developing the same health problem. Some hereditary diseases can even cause problems with your feet, such as arthritis, diabetic neuropathy, gout, or peripheral vascular disease.
This is why it’s important to create a family health history chart. This history is a written record of your family’s medical conditions, lifestyle habits like smoking, birthdates, and age and cause of death. This information can help your doctor assess your risk of certain diseases and make recommendations to help you lower your chances of getting those diseases. Plus your children and grandchildren can use this history to help them live longer, healthier lives.
Get the Facts
First, talk to your family members – include grandparents, parents, siblings and children. Information from aunts, uncles, half-siblings, nieces, nephews and cousins also can reveal health patterns.
Questions should ask:
What’s your birthdate?- What diseases or conditions do you currently have or have you had in the past, including the age of onset?
- Did you (or your wife/partner) have any problems with pregnancies or during childbirth?
- What countries did our family come from? (This may help reveal certain genetic diseases that occur more often within certain population groups.)
- Did anyone in the family have birth defects, learning problems or developmental disabilities like Down’s syndrome?
Also, ask about deceased relatives. What diseases or conditions did they have? How old were they when they died? What was the cause of their death?
Second, organize this information into a chart. Have an entry for each family member. The U.S. Surgeon General has created a family health history tool, so you can easily record this information.
Make an Action Plan
Review this chart with your doctor.- Ask your doctor about screening schedules for conditions that you’ve been identified as having an increased risk. Make sure to get any tests completed at the specified age.
- Ask your doctor for recommendations on how you may be able to decrease your risk for a certain disease. This may include medications and lifestyle changes, such as exercising more, eating healthier, watching your blood pressure, managing your weight, not smoking, and/or reducing your alcohol consumption.
Custom Orthotics Relieve Pain from Inherited Foot Conditions
Just as some diseases can be inherited, you can also inherit foot problems, like bunions, hammertoes and overlapping toes. Bunions are due to biomechanical imbalances during walking; while hammertoes and overlapping toes are from the effect of poor biomechanical functions of the foot. ezWalker® Custom Performance Orthotics can help relieve and, in some cases, eliminate pain while reducing any symptoms you may have from these conditions.
Similar to your family history being used as a preventive tool against future conditions, ezWalker® Custom Orthotics can aid your foot’s function, helping to prevent painful foot conditions from occurring in the first place. The ezWalker® device is a proper biomechanical custom orthotic that provides your arches with functional support. Over-the-counter arch supports and poorly designed custom orthotics can actually inhibit the way your foot is supposed to function. Over time, they can actually cause painful foot conditions to develop due to atrophy or misalignment of the bones. Since it’s difficult to recondition your feet once these conditions exist, it’s best to invest in proper functional orthotics, like ezWalker® Custom Orthotics.
Each ezWalker® Custom Orthotic is custom molded to the exact specifications of each of your feet, providing you with the correct support your individual feet need. Ultra-thin and ¾ length, these custom orthotics fit in a wide variety of shoes – saving you money. So order your pair today to reduce your risk of foot pain.
Because … when your feet feel good, you feel good.®
