This online medical crystal ball can (accurately) predict your risk of heart disease and diabetes

An online health risk calculator has proved more accurate than many methods traditionally used by doctors.

An online metabolic calculator developed by Dr Mark DeBoer, of the University of Virginia's Children's Hospital predicts patients' risk of developing heart disease and diabetes more accurately than traditional methods, a large new study has found. Dr DeBoer hopes it will prompt people to make lifestyle changes that will spare them the suffering and expense of avoidable illnesses. The doctor, who is an associate professor of paediatric medicine, says it's all about evaluating risk,

"This boils it down to telling a patient, 'on the risk spectrum, you are here, and you're in a position where we're worried you're going to have a cardiovascular event in the next ten years. My idea is that the more specific information you can give to people who are at risk, the more they will understand it and be motivated to make some changes."

Doctors have traditionally predicted risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke by looking for five factors: obesity, high blood pressure, high fasting triglycerides, low HDL (good) cholesterol and high fasting blood sugar. Individuals with abnormalities in at least three of these are diagnosed as having metabolic syndrome and told that they are at increased risk for future health problems. The problem with that approach, DeBoer says, is that it is too black-and-white,

"As is true in most processes in life, the reality is that this risk exists on a spectrum. Someone who has values in each of these individual risk factors that are just below the cutoff still has more risk for future disease than somebody who has very low values."

The doctor says that the traditional approach also fails to consider variables such as race and gender. However, the metabolic 'crystal ball', developed by DeBoer and his research partner Dr Matthew Gurka, weights the traditional risk factors and also takes into account race, gender and ethnicity to produce an easy-to-understand metabolic severity score. A small study previously found that the online calculator's predictions lined up well with actual cases of heart disease and diabetes, and a large new study has further confirmed that. The latest study looked at outcomes in more than 13,000 people and found that DeBoer and Gurka's tool was a better risk predictor than the individual risk factors alone. You can try it out for yourself here. Join the conversation on Twitter @HerFamilydotie