Wool and Spice

As a result of reading this Well column by Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times I found Your Disease Risk yesterday.  Designed by an expert in disease prevention, it asks a series of questions to determine your risk for several cancers (a biggie), heart disease (a  real biggie in our family), diabetes, stroke and osteoporosis.

It differs from the RealAge quiz in that it doesn’t trumpet a made-up age but instead evaluates your risk for developing these diseases based upon lifestyle and medical history. Then it tells you things you can do to reduce your risk. You get credit for such things as taking a multivitamin (check),  not smoking (double check), getting screening tests done (also check).

I still like the RealAge quiz because I like finding out I’m really only 47. What I don’t like is their pushy marketing agenda, making you register and capturing your e-mail.  The disease risk site doesn’t appear to have a marketing agenda (even though we both know they do, it’s just a softer approach) and doesn’t make you register, provide an e-mail address or jump through hoops to take the quiz. And their web people set up the site so that your answers carry over from one quiz to another.

Since my family has a history of heart disease, I’ve always assumed my risk was pretty high. After filling in some simple medical information about cholesterol, both total and HDL, diet, lifestyle, height, weight, etc. I was surprised to find my risk was “very much below average”.

So then I checked my risk for both breast cancer (below average) and colon cancer (much below average). Cool beans. The site also said it doesn’t appear that I’m going to have a stroke tomorrow, my bones aren’t going to wear out anytime soon and I don’t need to worry about insulin levels.

The things I’m doing right: eating nuts, whole grains, fruits and veggies. Not smoking, drinking only a little.

Oh and I like this:

What lowers your risk (of breast cancer):

You aren’t tall.

Being tall may raise your risk of colon cancer, breast cancer and pancreatic cancer. Scientists aren’t sure why. One reason may be that tall people have more cells in their bodies, which increases the number of cells that could become cancerous. Another reason may be that tall people grow faster as children. Faster growth is linked to changes in the genetic structure (DNA) of the body’s cells, eventually causing them to become cancerous.

Finally! A benefit to being short.

You know what two things would reduce my risk for every single one of these diseases even further: getting 3 hours of exercise a week and losing weight. Oh sure, I could eat less red meat, take an aspirin for my heart, reduce my cholesterol some more, but in every single category not exercising and being overweight increased my risk.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying I’m glad I made the commitment to Nora at Knot Much of a Knitter to do the 100-mile challenge again this year.

We’re just entering the prettiest time of year around here and the weather will be conducive for being outside. I can walk 3 miles in less than an hour. With the days getting longer, it should be easier to find an hour between sunrise and sunset (swiftly fly the years, la, la, la, la) to get out and hoof it on most days.

So that’s what’s going on here.

As a reward for reading this far, here is a completely unrelated picture that’s too cute to leave in the discard pile. Oh, and I found out that alpacas can get as big as 150 pounds, so they’re not quite the size of a normal dog. I still want one.