Temporarily suspending Empowered Health coverage

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   Dianne

   February 14, 2012 at 4:16 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment

   That’s Canada for you: sensible to the point of boring. Or not, as the post below shows…Just to point out, diet and exercise are not panaceas for health problems. I’ve seen any number of patients with nasty illnesses who asked me, “How could this happen to me? I eat right, exercise regularly, and have never smoked.” The answer, unfortunately, is that your BRCA mutation or factor V leiden don’t care if you did everything “right”, they’re still going to give you cancer or thrombosis. Good health habits reduce your risk of various problems, but they aren’t perfect preventative measures.

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   Crommunist

   February 14, 2012 at 5:24 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment

   Absolutely not panaceas, but at a population level they lower your risk greatly. This is the difference between how an MD thinks and how an epidemiologist thinks. “Individuals? What are those? You mean datapoints?”

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   peicurmudgeon

   February 14, 2012 at 7:27 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment

   Yep. I eat well, exercise, don’t smoke, rarely drink to excess, and I still managed a heart attack. Why? genetics. My father had one in his mid fifties and my mother and one in her early 70s.

   I suppose if I had gone in for regular homoeopathic treatments I could have avoided it altogether.

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   Dianne

   February 14, 2012 at 9:09 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment

   You’re an epidemiologist? I had the idea–FSM knows why–that you were in the physical sciences. Probably some stereotype about math and music.