The health choices you make each day are a major factor in how healthy you are. Other factors that affect your health are heredity and environment. Read through the tabs to learn more.
Heredity
Environment
Heredity is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring. Another name for heredity is genetics. Traits, passed from parent to child on genes, include eye color, body build, and patterns of growth. Traits may also include a tendency to get certain diseases. For example, the tendency to develop diabetes (die uh BEE teez) or certain types of cancer may be passed down through generations of a family.
Having a trait for a certain disease doesn’t always mean a person will have the disease. It means that person’s risk for the disease is greater than average.
Think about your own health behaviors and your genetics. Do your choices or family history place you at greater risk for a health problem? If so, what could you do to prevent that problem?
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Environment is the living and nonliving things that surround you. This includes the place you live, your school, the air you breathe, your friends, the food you eat, and the climate you live in. If you live in an area that has a lot of pollution, for example, it may negatively affect your health.
