Health Risk Assessment

Friday, April 2, 2010

Why You Need to Take a Health Risk Assessment

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Life today seems to be all drive-thru dinners, caffeine shots, and seventy hours a week at the office. Lots of things are getting sacrificed in our on the go lifestyle, perhaps the most important of which is our health.

Sitting at a computer all day, puffing away on our cigarettes and eating badly stresses the bodily systems and increases the risk for a host of serious health concerns, such as type two diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, the current number one killer of Americans.

Whatever you have on your to-do list for the day, be sure to pencil in taking a health risk assessment somewhere to help you identify your habits which are putting you at risk and begin to understand how to change them.

There are a variety of daily habits that most Americans have which can adversely affect our health in a number of ways and shorten our lifespan. The first and most common one is being overweight.

An easy way to figure out if you are overweight is to find out your body mass index, or BMI, which is a calculated ratio of your height to your weight. BMIs over twenty five are considered an indicator of being overweight, with BMIs over thirty as being indicative of obesity.

Any worthwhile health risk assessment you take will ask you to share your BMI, which you can find out quickly from a BMI table or through an online calculator. A BMI of 25 and over, combined with other poor health habits, can lay the foundation for diabetes and heart disease.

A good health risk assessment will also ask about your smoking and exercise habits. Everyone knows that smoking is hazardous to your health and can lead to cancer, but did you know that it can also increase blood pressure to dangerous levels? Long term smoking is a leading cause of heart attacks, stroke, and heart failure.

A final element that a thorough health risk assessment will inquire after is your family's medical history. Genetic predisposition is not the only factor in determining whether you will suffer a serious medical condition like diabetes or cancer, but it can certainly raise your likelihood.

When considering your family history, think back as far as you can in your direct blood line as to who suffered from what. People whose history you do not need to look to include family members by marriage, cousins, step-parents, and in-laws.

It is best to focus on your biological parents and four biological grandparents. Siblings who are dealing with an illness are also good indicators of the genes you have in your own body.

Once you have collected and prepared to share these pieces of date, enter them into a health risk assessment program. Many accurate ones may be found online that will analyze all these factors and provide you with an indication of your risk for various medical conditions in seconds.

It is important to understand that these online health risk assessment tools should not replace regular visits to a doctor, or being honest with your physician about your lifestyle habits or history.

They are meant to provide a wakeup call and get you thinking about the ways you can improve your own health today and start habits that will help you prolong your life, not shorten it.

Whether those steps are as small as walking to work or as large as joining a gym, know that it is never too late to start treating your body right. It will return the favor!

Andy West is a writer on a variety of topics, including health care. A health risk assessment can sometimes show what a person needs to do in order to have weight loss success.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andy_West

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