Scientists and psychologists are perennially engaged in the nature versus nurture debate, questioning how much of our personality and behaviour is down to our genes and how much a result of the way we're raised. In healthcare it seems simple - advances in medical science have proved how strong the genetic influence can be, but what about the influence of nurture upon our approach to health? Studies undertaken by US psychologists have shown that while a child may be born with a predisposition to anxiety, it's the way they are raised that shapes whether that innate anxiety will be heightened or minimised as they grow older. It makes sense, then, that an attitude to something as fundamental as the way we approach our overall health is affected by the same kind of influence.
Under the influence
Consider which of the following scenarios most applies to you when you're not feeling well. Do you:
B) Rush straight to your doctor's emergency clinic, anxious that something might be seriously wrong?
C) Monitor how you're feeling, only seeking medical advice if - as it says on packets of painkillers - symptoms persist?
Chances are that if you answered A or B your parents were either under- or overprotective of you, medically speaking, during your early years. A child who is packed off to bed for four days at the merest sign of a sniffle might well grow into a hypochondriac adult, their parents' worry for their health predisposing them to continue to overreact in the same way. Those who were encouraged to carry on regardless may well continue to do the same.
Of course, where it gets rather confusing is when the genetic influences of your health (the nature element) tie closely with your learned (or nurtured) responses. After all, no one could accuse someone with a strong history of breast cancer or heart disease in their family line of worrying that they might be prone to the same. But it's important to try to separate valid concern with over-anxiety (and if you're not sure you can do this alone, your doctor should be able to help).
Breaking the bond
So what to do? The trick is to consider how you were brought up and to try to relate it to your attitude now. To a child, parents (not unlike doctors) are strong authority figures; it's only natural that we adopt or fight against their views (you might just as well find you've taken the opposite stance against your parents' as a form of rebellion - fighting valiantly on if you were overly mollycoddled, or hyper-paranoid health-wise if you didn't get the attention you felt you deserved).
What's important now is to wrest some of that authority back. It's your body and your health. Understanding why we behave in certain ways enables us to moderate our behaviour and approach it in a more realistic fashion. And by learning how to deal properly with minor health crises now leaves us better able to cope with any major ones in the future.
So the next time your throat starts to itch, before you unthinkingly either reach for the doctor's 24-hour emergency call-out number or the strongest analgesics money can buy, consider the treatment your body actually needs and act accordingly. You never know, you might have just taken the very first step to breaking the habit of a lifetime.
Embarassing health problems solved
Get the answers to your sexual health problems
