Читать книгу Getting Out Alive: A Guide to Surviving Hospital - Michael Alexander - Страница 9

You can have a huge impact on your future health – even by making very small changes to just one of your risk factors. This book is not about how to deal with your risk factors, but I do want to emphasise the importance of being aware of what the risk factors are in your own case.

I’m not suggesting you start studying biology. However, you should, for instance, take some time to get to know your family history. Knowing if your mother, father, siblings or grandparents have or have had any illnesses can be vital. Indeed, acting on such information pre-emptively can be life saving. Pre-emptive treatment doesn’t necessarily have to be drastic, it can simply mean having screenings for certain diseases once or twice a year. This might involve a simple but regular blood, heart and lung check. Or it may involve early screenings for certain kinds of cancers, especially if members of your family have had a particular type.

There are many things you can do pre-emptively, so assess your family history and seek advice from your local medical professional to find out just exactly what you can do.

I had a friend who, when he turned forty, decided to run his first marathon. His two older brothers, father, and grandfather had all had heart attacks before the age of fifty. My friend was naturally worried about what might happen to him in the next ten years – this was what motivated him to train and run. His father and his brothers had discovered they had high cholesterol, even when eating a relatively normal diet. They were genetically predisposed. Since this discovery, my friend has regular blood tests, and like his brothers he takes medication to help reduce his cholesterol levels.

He’s now in his early fifties, and he has not had a heart attack.

This is a perfect example of using medical care to help live with a problem that will not go away. He’ll always be at risk, but he’s doing everything possible to reduce the odds of something bad happening.