Budget - 3. Helpful example #2: Type II Diabetes
[DISCLAIMER: This example and the included documents are provided for education and information purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical care. It does not replace advice from your healthcare professional. Readers should be aware that the content of their health questionnaire information may change over time as well as their risk. All users should seek advice from a qualified healthcare professional for a diagnosis and answers to their medical questions.]
In our second example, we introduce Julia a 50 year old, obese hispanic woman with low physical activity levels.
Julia identifies through the Siteman Your Disease Risk website, that she is at “Above Average” risk for developing Type II Diabetes.
[Stock image of Julia, hispanic, overweight]
The elevated disease risk arises from lifestyle, age and ethnicity.
Step 1: List the longevity risk
Julia has identified that Type II diabetes is a longevity risk for her.
She then lists this risk in the first column of her longevity risk management document.
Step 2: List the consequence
Here, the risk is that Julia will develop type II diabetes in the future. But she needs to go a bit deeper to get down to what that really means for her longevity.
Julia is informed by her own research, that there are some significant potential consequences to Type II Diabetes, namely increased risks of developing other diseases.
She adds this information to her longevity risk management plan.
Step 3: Choose a consequence category
In risk management, consequences have categories. In longevity risk management, these categories are:
Minor (no real risk to healthspan or lifespan)
Moderate (possible impacts to healthspan)
Major (healthspan impacts, possibly lifespan impacts)
Severe (lifespan impacts)
Referring to the ‘consequence category’ table, Julia identifies the appropriate category to be ‘Moderate’.
She makes this selection based on her risk of developing a chronic disease (type II diabetes), which will impact her healthspan.
Step 4: Choose a likelihood category
Given the clear results from the Siteman Your Disease Risk website, Julia has a very clear ‘Above Average’ risk.
This makes the development of Type II Diabetes ‘Likely’ for her.
Step 5: Determine the longevity risk rating
The next step involves matching the likelihood and consequence categories in the longevity risk rating table.
Recall from the previous example, that this is a simple matching of the row & column to get the risk rating.
For Julia, given her ‘Likely’ likelihood and ‘Moderate’ consequence, ends up with a ‘Medium’ longevity risk rating.
This is an appropriate result. She has not yet developed Type II Diabetes, and the consequences of that happening are not yet clear for her.
Looking forward, we can see that if Julia could make some lifestyle changes to reduce her likelihood of developing Type II Diabetes to “Unlikely”, she could reduce the risk rating to ‘Low’.
She may also choose to leverage longevity technologies such as continuous glucose monitoring, to gain further insight into how her activity levels and dietary choices are impacting her blood glucose levels.
That would be an example of longevity risk management.
But of course the first step she should take, is bringing her completed longevity risk management document to her doctor. The insights she (or you) have gained in this exercise only become actionable through input from healthcare professionals.
