Your family health history might be the most useful medical document you never wrote down. Dr. Rhea Rogers says patterns of heart disease, strokes, cancers, autoimmune disorders, depression and thyroid disease can give your doctor important clues years before disease becomes obvious. For people without family records, including those who were adopted, genetic testing can help fill in the gaps. The best time to ask the questions is when the people who know the answers are still around, and a holiday gathering is a natural place to start.
There is a second idea worth borrowing from this story: the anti-bucket list. Instead of a list of things to achieve before you die, it is a list of things to stop doing. Subtract guilt, grudges and obligations you never signed up for. One person in the story put it simply: one of the privileges of getting older is subtraction, and it is OK.
The episode also covers a serious local concern. Adults 75 and up account for nearly a third of traumatic brain injury hospitalizations, mostly from falls, and federal funding for TBI research has lapsed. And for inspiration, meet Hilda White, 95, who preserved over 50,000 plant specimens at the University of Vermont and now has a newly discovered fern named in her honor. So what is on your anti-bucket list?
