Mom had a heart attack a year ago. They also found and fixed an aortic aneurysm.
Mom's mom died of a heart attack. Mom's dad had diabetes, lung cancer, etc. (They died two weeks apart.)
Dad died of lung cancer, COPD, emphysema, etc. So did his dad, and his dad's dad.
Great-Grandma stroked out. Great Grandpa had cancer. Uncle died of heart disease.
So, health problems present themselves in every family. Nobody ever knows about any of it until it's too late.
What do we really look like on the inside? Not in our hearts, but our hearts themselves. Not mentally, but inside the brain? Breast cancer has gone from the #1 cause of death among women to #3 because of the mammogram. And in a few years, it will fall even further. Why? Because we figured out how to look for it.
So there are MRI's, CT scans, x-ray machines, etc that can look at our bodies on the inside. Sometimes they find stuff. But traditionally they are only ordered when symptoms dictate or when something is suspected to be wrong. We have a Disease Management system in the U.S., not a healthcare system. Tests are only performed when symptoms present themselves. With cancer, usually once symptoms are present it's too late for effective treatment. Aggressive treatment kills as many as it saves.
But how often do we have the opportunity to go get a full body CT Scan simply as a screening? Not often. But the technology exists now to do this relatively inexpensively, with relatively nominal radiation exposure and supposedly clear, reliable results.
The technology is called an Electron Beam CT Scan. I had one today. They're a little expensive, but not compared to individual tests for all of the things mentioned above. I'll know the results in a week or so. Of course, I think I will be 'unremarkable'. But it will be fun to know for sure.