Red Flag: Social markers for health analysis?

In this story from the NY Times:

New research suggests that people ages 30 to 69 who live alone are almost twice as likely as those who live with a partner to suffer angina, heart attacks, or sudden cardiac death.

Oh noes! Read further and you get to this:

The best predictors of acute cardiac syndrome were age and living alone. Dr. Kirsten Melgaard Nielsen, the lead author of the study and an internist at Aarhus Sygehus University Hospital, said that it was not living alone itself that increased the risk, but the health practices of those who lived without partners.

“They’re less likely to exercise, they eat more fat, and they’re more likely to smoke and have high cholesterol,” she said.

So it is not really about living alone, it is about lack of exercise, eating more fat, smoking and having more cholesterol. Living alone doesn’t CAUSE these things. However, it may CORRELATE with them. I might as well say that people watching television regularly are twice as likely to get sick. After all, I can correlate television and sickness just the same.

At the end, we come to this:

“Doctors should look carefully at social markers in evaluating a patient’s risk for heart disease,” Dr. Nielsen said. “If they do, they are more likely to find risk factors that they can treat.”

So, in the near future, doctors (most of which will be women), will begin examining our social lives to ‘evaluate risk.’ And if someone does live alone and/or has a ‘poor social life’ according to the doctor, this will be seen as a ‘risk factor’ to be treated. Treated…how?

This is a big red flag of doctors going where they don’t belong. A doctor cannot examine your ‘social life’ because there is no correct basis of what a “healthy” social life is. Some people are naturally extroverts and introverts. Some people like to live alone.

With that in mind I should point out that, women HATE being alone. They think anyone being alone is a LOSER (never mind men are most productive and think the best when alone).

Social life is a female phrase meaning “woman’s life.” Only women would think being social 24/7 is the norm for everyone and for both genders.

How about doctors test for markings of intellectual health? “But Pook, women would fail those tests.” Alas! Poor women!

So I am waving a red flag to keep an eye on this. Testing for markings of “social life” (which will inevitably be defined by some woman) is right around the corner.