{"id":69154,"date":"2012-11-21T11:58:24","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T16:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=69154"},"modified":"2012-11-21T13:26:03","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T18:26:03","slug":"thanksgiving-reminds-of-family-health-historys-importance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/11\/thanksgiving-reminds-of-family-health-historys-importance\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving Reminds of Family Health History\u2019s Importance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanksgiving Day comes with those familiar health reminders: don\u2019t cross-contaminate cooking utensils and surfaces, make sure your bird is cooked thoroughly, don\u2019t overstuff yourself, refrigerate leftovers promptly, let someone else drive if you\u2019ve had too much wine.<\/p>\n

A less familiar reminder might be to use this annual gathering of relatives to talk about family health history.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>
Dr. Runjhun Misra (Tina Encarnacion\/ UConn Health Center Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThere are many diseases that you could very well inherit, and one of the best ways to find out if you have a risk factor to develop that disease is if you have a strong family history of it,\u201d says Dr. Runjhun Misra, a third-year primary care and internal medicine resident at the University of Connecticut Health Center.<\/p>\n

In 2004, the U.S. Surgeon General<\/a> declared National Family History Day would be recognized annually on Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

Misra tells WTIC NewsTalk 1080<\/a>\u2019s \u201cAt Home in Connecticut\u201d program, the important facts to know include which family members had what disease, and at what age.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to ask three generations back, so you want to go as far back as your grandparents,\u201d Misra says.<\/p>\n

A podcast of Misra\u2019s interview with WTIC\u2019s Bill Pearse is available at\u00a0http:\/\/today.uchc.edu\/audio\/misra_11_18_2012_wtic.MP3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services offers My Family Health Portrait<\/a>, a free web-based tool that helps create a family health history chart and a drawing of a family tree. The chart and the drawing can be printed and shared with family members and health care professionals.<\/p>\n

\n

Follow\u00a0the UConn Health Center<\/a> on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a> and\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read\u2014and hear\u2014how gathering with relatives can be good for your long-term health. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":69160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57,2010],"class_list":["post-69154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 10:03:33","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69154"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69193,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69154\/revisions\/69193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/69160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69154"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=69154"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}