4. Use free online tools to screen for top age-related disease risk
Complete the siteman cancer center “your disease risk” tool
Estimated time to completion: 60-90 minutes
Cost: $0
Your next step is utilise another free tool, which will build on the information you compiled in the above exercise.
The Siteman Cancer Center “Your Disease Risk” web tool is an incredible resource for establishing both the age related diseases you may be at risk for and also the likelihood of disease development.
It does this for 12 of the most common cancers and 6 other age-related chronic diseases.
This tool is important, because it directly compliments the work we’ve done in the previous step (Family Health History) by assessing your risk more individually.
Start with your risk snapshot
It takes into consideration:
Your age, biological sex, weight, height
Known health conditions (e.g. hypertension)
Health conditions in related family members (from your Family Health History)
Some basic lifestyle choices (smoking, alcohol use, eating habits)
Detailed information on the types of food you eat and their frequency
Some information on the supplements you take
Information about your activity level
Take detailed surveys based on risk snapshot
Using your introductory ‘Risk Snapshot’, we recommend you then complete a detailed risk survey for each of your ‘above average’ and ‘average’ disease risks.
These will take into consideration further information:
More family health history specific to the disease risk
Your ethnic background
Additional dietary/supplementation information
This will then further customise your disease risk.
You will also see some suggestions for how you might manage your risk (e.g. 4-5x servings of tomatoes to lower your prostate cancer risk) and what health screening you might undertake with your doctor. We’ll leverage this information when we progress to prioritizing and managing risk.
Keep a record of your results, and the guidance you received. You’ll need them to continue.
If you have time, we recommend that you complete all of the available surveys to get as complete a picture as possible.
From here, you’ll next be guided to choose how you’d like to proceed. You can continue to use only free or low cost options to complete your longevity risk profile (Budget pathway). Or you can elect to spend additional money to complete your risk profile using genetic risk analysis (Balanced pathway).
