A gift to the people of Australia
Once upon a time some medical research people were launching a diabetes and heart research program and randomly chose six neighbourhoods in Queensland for sampling, of which mine was one. So they came door knocking, asking if we’d like to participate. Knowing the difficulties involved in scientific research myself, I signed up. Now, no matter where I go they find me and send me surveys to fill in, and every five years I go in for testing – rigorous testing.
The five years came around on Friday morning, so I fasted, went in and had initial blood test, drank syrupy sweet sugar liquid, had my height and weight taken, did my depression survey (this was weird), my food survey, my physical function tests, memory, word knowledge and number pattern tests (I was a little surprised by these – they haven’t featured in previous tests), transport, household and physical activity surveys and so on and so on and so on. I even had to give them a urine sample – eek! Eventually they let me go, but I have come away with a thigh monitor and a hip monitor on, that I am to wear for a week. These were voluntary extras. I drew the line at the 24-hour blood-pressure monitor though, mainly because I had to get it back to them the next morning, and I didn't want to go back there on a Saturday (I had a few hours work to do on Saturday to make up for time lost on Friday already).
Anyhow, I have done what I could to skew the data to the healthy end. Just quietly, I think I aced it for you all. I have low blood pressure, low cholesterol (not that a person necessarily has any control over those), there is nothing yet wrong with my physical functioning (when they strapped something on my ankle to test my leg force, I smiled to myself and thought, I think the family calf muscles I inherited might make an outlier of me on this one), I eat vegetables, and word knowledge and number pattern tests? - I like them. I am not sure about the memory test however. They rattled off a very long list of things we were to buy at the shops, and then we had to recall as many as possible. I wasn't really concentrating and that's mean when you haven't had any breakfast. (And it made me think that maybe all these GTD type systems that say you should get things out of your head and onto paper/into devices aren't actually so good for your brain. Try remembering your to-do list and social calender instead.) One day in I am thoroughly irritated by this hip monitor though! I will be pleased to be done with it.