Contribute to science (and tell your friends your grip strength)

Popeye's grip strength delivers healthy greens

In health care, a better understanding of the factors that lead to disease is key to developing improved diagnostics and treatments. With the opening of the Ontario Health Study for general recruitment, life science entrepreneurs can look forward to gleaning insights from a new large-scale study.

After an initial phase involving more than 8,000 Ontarians, it now becomes the largest population-based health study ever done in Ontario. The study aims to follow participants over their entire lifespan (yes, from now until the end) to examine risk factors involved in chronic diseases including heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

A multidisciplinary team of scientists will use the data to learn how factors from the environment, lifestyle, behaviour and genetics lead to these common diseases. This will ultimately lead to better treatments and diagnostics.

Are you excited yet? This is your chance to help show whether going to the gym makes any difference at all or if you can rely on family history that has your grandmother breaking three digits.  Sure, the results won’t be in for a while but when you tell your grandchildren why they should eat their vegetables you’ll at least have data to back it up.

The study will record all kinds of information, everything from how many hours you sleep each night to the results of a full-body DEXA scan (to determine total body fat, fat distribution and bone calcification.) One data point that I am especially interested in: grip strength. As a rock climber, a ridiculous number could mean that I drop everything to fulfill my destiny as a world-class climber. Or not. Either way, information is power. And contributing to science is pretty cool.

Over 18 and in Ontario? Sign up now.

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Tags: health care, life sciences, ontario