The Doctor Weighs In

Check out DiabetesPHD on the American Diabetes Association website. It is a risk assessment tool that uses Archimedes, a sophisticated computerized health modeling program to determine your risk of developing heart disease, stroke, and/or diabetes and its complications (kidney failure, eye problems, foot problems) over the next thirty years.

The best thing about this program is it gives you a chance to see what happens to your risk if you lose weight, reduce your blood pressure or improve your cholesterol levels. You can also model the impact of taking certain medications or having better health habits (not smoking, taking an aspirin a day if you are over 40). It is pretty cool to watch the graphs of your risk improve in front of your eyes when you lop off 40 pounds or lower your cholesterol by 40 points.

The advice DiabetesPHD provides is specific to you since you entered your numbers which were then run through the Archimedes model (which is based on published scientific studies of health risks). The advice contains hyperlinks so that you can easily access more information on topics relevant to your risk profile.

Here’s how it works. You go to the data entry page of the tool and type in relevant information about yourself, including the names of any medications you are taking for diabetes, high blood pressure, or abnormal lipids -- so be sure to have you medication list when you sit down to use the program. You will also be asked to enter your latest blood pressure, blood glucose, as well as total cholesterol, LDL and HDL levels. It can calculate risk without these numbers, but is more accurate if you can provide them. You are also asked to answer a series of yes/no questions about your health history.

Once all of the information is entered you are given the choice of getting your results now or receiving them by email. It can take a number of minutes for the program to calculate your results because your information is being run against a very complicated health modeling program. So put aside about 15 – 20 minutes to use the tool, including entering the data and waiting for the results.

It is well worth the effort. The combination of a clear visual display of your health risks now and over the next 30 years and being able to see the impact of improvements in risk factors is powerful. These pictures are definitely worth a thousand words.

Pat Salber, MD, MBA