Get an internal assessment with the power to predict.
- Pay close attention to changes in your daily functioning. Alterations in basic patterns like sleep, appetite, energy or general activity levels—or the development of what Benyamani calls "vague bodily sensations, not things you would necessarily tie to specific illness"—are possible red flags that only you would notice.
- In assessing your health, focus on behaviors that put you at risk for a wide number of diseases, like smoking, says Ellen Idler, a health psychology researcher at Rutgers University.
- Draw on your experiences of illness to compare your current state with the past. Idler's research finds that people with no history of serious illness aren't as good at predicting their future health.
- Your health is not a checklist. According to Benyamani, "Simply knowing how many chronic conditions you have is not very useful, because you don't know very much about the severity of those conditions."
- Depression or mood will cloud your crystal ball. Disposition isn't as closely linked to mortality or the onset of disease as other factors, such as diet and energy level.
Health Quiz
How healthy do you think you are? Print out this quiz and find out!
