- Joined
- Jul 13, 2010
- Messages
- 1,991
There's a lot of good advice and experience on this board. I find the most valuable to be the health related advice in regards to this lifestyle. We have some very smart people here who freely give out their expertise (thank you for that, you know who you are) and guys like me with no medical or related background who are here to learn and hopefully get a few more years on this planet with the advice we get here while doing the one thing we all have in common.
We have various threads mentioning clotting factors, calcium scores, and various tests that can give us concrete answers about existing unknown issues. Many of us have trash medical care. We are lucky to get a competent PA. Most of the time we get triage nurses who don't pay attention or clearly have no idea what they are doing (taking blood pressure) or a Primary Care who somehow made their way through med school but probably shouldn't be giving anyone medical care.
Others have insurance that wont cover testing that would save their lives. For instance, I had a parent with the BRCA gene who died of breast cancer. It was a long drawn out nightmare. I'm finding it a nightmare to get my insurance to cover the test "because I'm a male". I have a father who had a heart attack much younger than I am now. He lived to 71 on scripts and stents. A cousin of mine just found out he has melanoma and in this same time frame his sister had a brain tumor removed. My sister had a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy (no cancer gene, lots of cigarettes and sugar though). I have one aunt who died of lung cancer. Another had breast cancer but has survived until 77 at this point. Another aunt died of what was most likely cancer. Another cousin died of a widow maker heart attack at 51. My uncle had a stroke that essentially melted his brain, it would have been better if it killed him.
That was a list of relatives. I haven't even touched on the people who aren't blood related with similar issues. The one thing they had in common was their lifestyle. Among them they smoked packs of cigarettes, ate garbage food, didn't sleep, had high stress jobs, and everything else on the list of things you shouldn't do if you care about yourself. I'm not actually worried day to day about dying early. If that happens, so be it. But I really would rather know how many loaded guns I have pointing at my head. I have zero illusions that I have those genes that would allow me to abuse myself and live to old age.
With the access we have to direct testing, which tests should we be ordering for ourselves to weed out genetic traits that put a crosshair on us we may be unaware of? There are no shortage of threads where this information is to be found but it's not consolidated into one place. That would be priceless. I mentioned clotting but there are probably multiple clotting disorders.
I am going to have to be proactive and know what needs to be done. For the guys who can help, what Lab work specifically? Which diagnostics? Calcium score was mentioned. Are there others? Who provides these services? Is it as easy as ordering these tests online? I think you need a referral for the calcium score? What if that is not possible?
I'm not talking about the obvious tests (CBC, regular bloodwork, eating right, supplements, etc.) as I think we are all generally aware of those by now.
Sorry for the long post. Thanks if you got to the end. I tried to trim this down and hope it wasn't verbose. I'm willing to pay thousands out of pocket.
We have various threads mentioning clotting factors, calcium scores, and various tests that can give us concrete answers about existing unknown issues. Many of us have trash medical care. We are lucky to get a competent PA. Most of the time we get triage nurses who don't pay attention or clearly have no idea what they are doing (taking blood pressure) or a Primary Care who somehow made their way through med school but probably shouldn't be giving anyone medical care.
Others have insurance that wont cover testing that would save their lives. For instance, I had a parent with the BRCA gene who died of breast cancer. It was a long drawn out nightmare. I'm finding it a nightmare to get my insurance to cover the test "because I'm a male". I have a father who had a heart attack much younger than I am now. He lived to 71 on scripts and stents. A cousin of mine just found out he has melanoma and in this same time frame his sister had a brain tumor removed. My sister had a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy (no cancer gene, lots of cigarettes and sugar though). I have one aunt who died of lung cancer. Another had breast cancer but has survived until 77 at this point. Another aunt died of what was most likely cancer. Another cousin died of a widow maker heart attack at 51. My uncle had a stroke that essentially melted his brain, it would have been better if it killed him.
That was a list of relatives. I haven't even touched on the people who aren't blood related with similar issues. The one thing they had in common was their lifestyle. Among them they smoked packs of cigarettes, ate garbage food, didn't sleep, had high stress jobs, and everything else on the list of things you shouldn't do if you care about yourself. I'm not actually worried day to day about dying early. If that happens, so be it. But I really would rather know how many loaded guns I have pointing at my head. I have zero illusions that I have those genes that would allow me to abuse myself and live to old age.
With the access we have to direct testing, which tests should we be ordering for ourselves to weed out genetic traits that put a crosshair on us we may be unaware of? There are no shortage of threads where this information is to be found but it's not consolidated into one place. That would be priceless. I mentioned clotting but there are probably multiple clotting disorders.
I am going to have to be proactive and know what needs to be done. For the guys who can help, what Lab work specifically? Which diagnostics? Calcium score was mentioned. Are there others? Who provides these services? Is it as easy as ordering these tests online? I think you need a referral for the calcium score? What if that is not possible?
I'm not talking about the obvious tests (CBC, regular bloodwork, eating right, supplements, etc.) as I think we are all generally aware of those by now.
Sorry for the long post. Thanks if you got to the end. I tried to trim this down and hope it wasn't verbose. I'm willing to pay thousands out of pocket.