Tag : blood-pressure

You know your height and weight. You probably have a rough idea about your cholesterol number and what it should be. You might know your blood pressure. But there’s another number that most people don’t know, but should.

That number is your 25 hydroxy vitamin D level. Modern Americans avoid sun exposure in an effort to avoid wrinkles and skin cancer. But skipping the sunshine means that they don’t make enough vitamin D. Many studies have now established that the lower your vitamin D, the higher your risk of cancer, autoimmune disease, and premature death.

I recommend that everyone get their vitamin D checked

Thanks to modern medical advances, there are an almost unlimited number of tests doctors can administer to determine who is at the greatest risk of heart attacks, strokes and dementia. Take the simple cholesterol test, for example: today we doctors can subdivide your cholesterol into seven or eight or even nine smaller subtypes and analyze your risk of cardiovascular disease, even if you appear to have “low” or “normal” cholesterol. Physicians today can administer a battery of expensive tests for just about everything.