How's your health?

Tonight I completed my online health assessment for our health insurance. I’ve been fighting doing it for years, and if I told you why you would say that it’s not my physical health that is an issue, but my mental health. So we won’t discuss that.  

I’ve worked in the medical field for over 27 years. It’s not like I really need a computer-generated program to tell me what my health concerns are. But if they really send me a check for $150 for doing this assessment, in addition to completing my biometrics screen, well, I guess I’ll take the money.

I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t smoke. My total cholesterol is 168, my fasting blood sugar 93. My BMI is 24 (depending on which chart you use, that can be borderline overweight, but our health insurance congratulated me on it, so they must think it’s ok). My blood pressure was 112/68 (or something close to that. I’m not going to drag it out again).

I don’t eat beef. They asked if I ever eat lamb. I don’t know if that is good for you or not, but on principle I avoid eating all baby animals. I do eat processed meats once or twice a week (hard telling what adult or baby animals are in there). I fudged the rest of my diet by a little bit. I think about eating fruits and vegetables, I want to eat them, but somehow they rarely find their way into my bag in the morning.

They didn’t ask about chocolate, though. Probably a good thing.

They did ask about sleep. That is probably my biggest health risk. I need more sleep, but there are just not enough hours in the day. Which leads to the next question. Stress. I must have really fudged those answers. Otherwise lights would have started blinking on the computer screen, words flashing across the screen: “We have called 911 for you. Please stay where you are and the ambulance will be there shortly.”

The only other concern this computer-generated questionnaire had was that I am not active enough. Which we all know is not true, but I think they define exercise as a sustained yet somewhat relaxing activity that raises your heart rate but gets you in a zen-kind of a place. Instead of activity which only raises your blood pressure and your stress level.

So I told the computer program that I would put a reasonable amount of effort into getting the proper amount and type of exercise and I would at least think about getting more sleep. Life is too short to live forever.

Oh, and I got my flu shot today. 

How are your biometrics scores? How long will your life be? 

 You want to avoid this place.

And this place.