Your medical history, that is. If you (or your spouse) has a strong family history of cardiovascular disease, you (or your spouse), too, could be at risk, and you could be passing that risk on to your kids. Therefore, it's important to make your internist and your pediatrician aware of any incidence of heart disease in primary relatives -- parents, siblings, and grandparents.

Your family doctor probably has taken a detailed medical history, but your child's doctor might not have. So don't hesitate to bring up the subject with your pediatrician at the earliest possible opportunity.

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Hey women, although your sweet-tooth might be in your genes, as I told you a few days ago, other factors play a major role in how you taste sweet things -- namely smoking and your family's history of alcoholism. Smoking, not surprisingly, dulls your tastebuds to sweet foods, so theoretically, it will take more sugar to satisfy your sweet cravings than it would if you were a non-smoker.

And if your family has a history of alcoholism, you're more likely to crave sweets. Strange -- I don't see a link here. But researchers believe a genetic predisposition to addiction is at the heart of both of these findings.

What do you think about these findings?

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The next time you gather the family around for that holiday dinner, you might want to ask some medical questions after all the eating is done. Why? Well, new research out of Scotland says that paying attention to the heart risk factors of close relatives could prevent 40 percent of early deaths due to heart disease.

It seems to me that most disease happens due to a combination of genetics and environment along with about a zillion variables in each category.

But, knowing the possible predisposition to family histories with an above-average amount of disease along any line may make you pick certain lifestyle choices, right? It would me. When the human genome is fully understood (we're not even close), things will be a bit easier in terms of specific predictions. Until then, you may have to ask those hard questions.

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A British study has recently concluded that women are more likely to inherit the risk of the most common type of stroke. Ischemic strokes account for 83% of all strokes, and occur when there is an artery blockage in the brain.

The study found that women who suffered this type of stroke were 40% more likely to have a close relative who had also had a stroke when compared to men. Most of the time, this close relative was female. In fact, in women who had a stroke, having a mother who also suffered a stroke was 80% more common than in men.

What all these statistics mean is that family history of ischemic strokes is particularly important to women, especially when a female relative is involved. Doctors caution that men also need to be aware of their family histories, but the genetic link seems to be stronger between female relatives.

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