What Healthy People Do

What is your 10-year risk of developing diabetes?

We are facing a true epidemic of diabetesity, the obesity caused diabetes and all of its inherent ugly complications. Are you at risk? Find out at qdscore.org. This is a British site based on an eight-year study of 2.5 million Brits so it is quite accurate. You’ll love the graphic if nothing else.

If your score is too high, then I’m guessing you weigh too much, so redo the test as though you weighed 11 pounds (5 kg) or 22 pounds (10 kg ) less. You’ll really be able to see the benefit of losing weight.

My patients really value seeing their health as a whole and understanding their current health status and future risks. Over the next few days, I am going to list some very cool Web sites to assess your current health and future risks and then after that I will identify the optimal criteria for your current health risk assessment — and tell you why your results matter.

Cool site No. 1: How fit are you?

Go to adultfitnesstest.org to assess your current fitness and benchmark yourself against national age- and sex-adjusted percentiles. The tests are clearly explained, quite simple, and very reliable.

In my preventive medicine, executive health practice, there are three kinds of patients: (1) the “healthy," (2) the "here's-hoping," and (3) the "hear-no-evil, see-no-evil.”

I see only the first two groups. I do not see the "my-health-problems-do-not-exist-unless-a-physician-finds-them” group. This last group stays “healthy” by avoiding my office — at least they were healthy until they ended up in the coronary care unit.

Guess which group I most need to see.

Why should and how can you convince those important in your life to see me or a good primary care physician for a really good history, exam and lab work? Tell them that our primary task today is to keep people as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

Thirty years ago the purpose of a medical exam was to find bad disease early. A scary thought.

No more. Today, the entire focus is to prevent future disease by identifying treatable risk factors.

A good physician can help a patient prevent 90 percent of type II diabetes, at least 50 percent of all future heart attacks and strokes, 90 percent of lung cancer, maybe 80 percent of colon cancer, and more.

Preventing a heart attack is much easier, and a whole lot cheaper, than treating it well.