How does enviornment and heredity factor into your total health?

Answer 1

Heredity refers to your genetic predisposition for certain traits (e.g your susceptibility to a certain illness - such as diabetes, autoimmune diseases, glaucoma, haemophilia or breast cancer which can be 'passed down' from the parents to their offspring and subsequent generations. Such an inclination already exists in your body, as you carry the genes that code for those traits.

The environment can cause detrimental effects to your health. It can cause a pre-existing genetic condition to surface. It can also bring about new conditions that you're NOT genetically prone to acquiring (such as lung cancer, caused by inhalation of airborne pollutants over an extended period of time).

Answer 2

There have been hundreds if not thousands of books
written on this subject but basically your enviornment
dictates the kind of nutrition you're getting whether it's
dietary or emotional. A person may be well fed but if
they're psychologically unbalanced it can lead to the
kind of stress, sleeplessness and worry that affects all
the major organs. Another may have a high powered
job, wealth and fame but if they live in a smog infested
city, their health will eventually be an issue, etc.
Heredity not only includes diseases that might be passed
on to you through your bloodline, but certain propensities
toward behavioral factors such as tendencies towards
violence, addictions and suicide which could indeed be
very bad for your health. It is the delicate balance between
enviornment and heredity that forms us all, good or bad,
and dictates our total health.

Answer 3

If the environment is bad, it worsens your health. Say the air is polluted. If you inhale that, you'll probably get sick. Clean water is also another environmental factor.
You might inherit a disease from a family member, or perhaps a trait runs in your family. That can affect your health.

Answer 4

Heritability of height, for instance. You may have an additive, polygenic genotype for tallness, but you have developmental insults thrust upon you. Poor nutrition, for example, so you never live up to your genetic promise.