**Transcript**
Hi everybody, Dr. Julie McLaughlin here with a Functional Medicine Friday. So today what we're going to talk about is the risk assessment. So remember, last week we were talking about our McLaughlin health risk assessment. Well, we're going to keep going on those questions.
So our next five questions on the risk assessment are, question number six, have you been checked for a vitamin D deficiency? So with vitamin D it's the one thing that I can honestly say if you're not taking vitamin D you're deficient. Everybody we've ever talked to who is not taking vitamin D, is deficient. So now some people will say, well, I have my vitamin D checked and my levels are good.
This is the problem. When those levels are between 20 or 30 and a hundred, that's a huge, huge range. So what we want is your range to be between 60 and 80. So if you have suboptimal vitamin D range and it might be in the normal range on the lab, but it's not in the healthy range, especially now with COVID and all kinds of other things going on in this world.
So these are the risk factors that if you're deficient in vitamin D, whether you know it or you don't, you got to look for, cause people with low vitamin D levels are twice as likely to have diabetes, 40% likely to have high blood pressure, and 30% more likely to suffer a heart attack.
You mean, vitamin D does all this? Yep. And it also boosts your immune system. So we want to make sure you know your vitamin D levels. And if you say I'm already taking vitamin D make sure you're monitoring your vitamin D levels, because if you take too much, it can cause kidney problems and nobody needs kidney stones. They say it's worse than childbirth, so nobody has time for that.
So question number seven is, do you have a history of migraine headaches? It's like, wait, migraine headaches is a risk, right? So if you've never had migraine headaches, you're good to go. If you have them occasionally but no aura, that's like a flashing light or a sound or a smell or something prior to getting the migraine, or if you have them on a regular basis and you have an aura, or if you have them on a regular basis and they are debilitating and all-consuming and you lose all your ability to function, you just have to be in bed. Then we know that those migraines are a really huge risk factor. And the aura is that additional risk with them.
So people who have migraines with an aura, like the visual disturbance or flashing lights or something like that, or sound or something at least once a week are more than four times more likely to have a stroke. So if this is you, we got to talk about this, right?
Risk number eight. How do you characterize your ability to cope with stress? We live in such a stressful world. There's so many things just piled on every single one of us. So if you're pretty laid back and you're not affected by stress, that's awesome. But if you don't have a way to cope with stress or people are saying you're stressed or you feel stressed. And if it's integrating with your life and your relationships and you're just having panic attacks and anxiety attacks, that's a huge risk because people who are stressed have twice the risk of having a heart attack and three times the risk of having a stroke.
We were just looking at some statistics on our law enforcement officers for their health. And we would all agree that it is a super stressful job, super stressful. Did you know that their risk of having a heart attack is something like 10 to 20 years earlier than the average person who's not in law enforcement.
So if stress can cause you to have heart issues, we want to try to work on eliminating that. So one of the things that we do is we obviously work with meditation and relaxation and things like that, but sometimes, you just don't have time. So we have created in our supplement store, a stress pack.
You all know we have well packs, right? Where I have custom formulated it for you to help you with different conditions. So in our stress pack, we have some adrenal b, because we need that adrenal support some L-theanine for some calming. And then we have a stress management formula that's going to help you get through the days without those highs and lows and those bumps and those extra anxieties without just being exhausted. So if you think you need some stress help, go check out our online store https://www.mclaughlincare.com/supplement-shop and look at the anti-stress pack.
Number nine. How much time do you spend sitting? On the job driving or at home, if it's less than five hours, you're good to go. If you're more than nine hours, we got to talk. Right? So sitting more than nine hours a day has a 40% increase of risk of dying within three years from any case compared to those who sat for less than four hours a day. Wait, wait, wait, wait, did you hear that? 40% increased risk of dying in three years. If you're sitting more than nine hours a day, like, no, we don't want to do that.
What I want you to do is get a little timer on your phone and set it for at least every hour and get up and walk around. I need you guys moving around significantly in addition to daily exercise. So let's get rid of this risk factor.
Our last one for today is, how much formal exercise do you get? This kind of goes along with our last one. So a sedentary person's risk factor of dying is 50 times higher than the average risk factor for a person who exercises five times a week. So can we all agree that we all should all be exercising.
So we know what gets measured, gets managed. And if you have any of these risks or if you'd like to take our entire risk assessment for free, you can do so online and just click on it and you can answer all the questions and it will give you your scores immediately. So we know how do we change your risks? You eat better, you move better, you think better and you sleep better.
We offer different things in our office. And I know you all know them. We do a risk assessment, like we just talked about. We check your blood pressure, your pulse oximeter, or we look at your body posture and your body composition. We do lab tests. We look at core strength and flexibility, of course, along with our exams where we test orthopedic, neurologic, the whole spectrum to make sure you are as healthy as you can be. So that's it for Functional Medicine Friday. I'll see you soon.
Supplement store: https://www.mclaughlincare.com/supplement-shop
Risk Assessment Quiz: https://www.mclaughlincare.com/risk-assessment
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