Charles Wallace and his wife believe that a deCODEme Complete Scan helped save Chuck's life when it lead to discovering Prostate Cancer. Click on the picture to see Chuck's story.

Dr. Bradley Bale at the the Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Center is a big believer in deCODE’s tests for genetic risk factors for cardiovascular disease. As he has for many of his patients, Dr. Bale recommended that Charles Wallace, a 55 year-old Texan, have a full deCODEme scan to understand his risk of a range of conditions, including cardiovascular diseases. The breadth of the risk factors analyzed by deCODEme proved to be very important indeed. Mr. Wallace learned that he was at nearly double the average risk of prostate cancer, a piece of information he and Bale followed up on and that Wallace credits with helping to save his life.

Pam Bale is going to get her three grown-up children a deCODEme genetic test for Christmas

Pam Bale knows what she wants to get her three children for Christmas. Two of Pam’s children are in their 20s and the other is 30. In other words, a little too old for video games. So they’re not getting a Wii or Guitar Hero. Instead, Pam wants to surprise her kids on December 25th with a genetic test.

“I think the kit would open up all sorts of doors to their future,” says Pam. “They are young adults, and at their ages the test can show them what medical concerns they might face down the road. They are young enough so they can take the steps to avoid those concerns. It would make their whole future happier and healthier and extend their lives. I think it’s a great gift to give to my kids. So don’t tell them. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

For the whole interview with Pam Bale go to deCODEme Customer Stories.

Jack Doughery says deCODEme genetic test was an investment

Jack Doughery feels great and wants everyone to know it.

“I almost feel evangelical about my health,” says the 62-year-old businessman from Spokane, Washington. “I’m so excited about what can happen if you do the right things and have the right tools.”

Jack started doing the right things once he began what he calls his journey, which kicked off one day after waking up at three in the morning craving a cigarette.

“When you’re waking up at three in the morning, coughing and spluttering, and the only way to calm down is by smoking a cigarette, you don’t have to be too smart to know this might not be the way to go. It got my attention,” he remembers.

One of Jack’s first stops along his grand trip was at Spokane’s Heart Attack and Stroke Prevention Clinic, run by nurse practitioner Amy Doneen. It was Doneen and Dr. Bradley Bale who put Jack on the path to prevention, helping Jack to reshape his life using diagnostic testing, nutrition and exercise.

Recently, Amy Doneen began using a new test to help alter Jack’s journey—deCODEme, a genetic test that scans a patient’s genome for markers relating to 30 various diseases. The deCODEme genetic test gauges a patient’s average and lifetime risk of developing diseases such as Alzheimer’s, heart attack, prostate cancer, and most recently bladder cancer.

“I’m no doctor,” Jack says. “But in laymen’s terms, the tool is another arrow in Dr. Bale’s quiver to help me do the right things.”

Jack hasn’t always done the right things. In addition to his a two-pack-a-day habit, he often drank copious amounts of alcohol. He was, in his own words, in “bad shape.” Even the death of his father at the early age of 62 didn’t alter the trajectory of his unhealthy lifestyle.

“Back then, I thought 62 was old. Now that I’m 62, I’ve changed my mind.”

deCODEme genetic test customer Jack Doughery

Children often pick up their parents’ habits, and so it was for Jack. One of those habits was a breakfast straight from the heart-attack diet.

“We ate bacon, sausage, eggs, all fried and cooked in lard. We had biscuits, gravy and maybe some peach or cherry cobbler,” he says, and then to make sure he’s understood, he emphasizes: “I’m still talking about breakfast. I haven’t moved on.”

Pulling no punches, this eat-everything diet made Jack—”fat.”

“I was one large unit,” he remembers. “I weighed 197 pounds in the eighth grade. I had to breathe hard just trying to walk.”

That changed when Jack discovered girls. Realizing that most girls weren’t interested in boys that looked like him, he began eating nothing but cottage cheese and lost 60 pounds in 90 days.

“I think I was the first person to invent the Atkins diet,” Jack says with a laugh, referring to the popular diet consisting of high protein and low carbohydrates.

But the weight loss was only temporary. Jack continued to smoke and drink and the pounds piled back on. Jack says that he didn’t really take control of his health until he started a family. It was then he realized that he wanted to be around to see his grandchildren. So he quit smoking and drinking all in one day and began an exercise program. This, he recalls, was his first investment in his own health.

“I weighed over 200 pounds. Now I weigh 166 pounds. I wanted to make sure when I was older I was living a quality life rather than just trying to make it.”

Helping Jack live a quality life are Dr. Bradley Bald and Amy Doneen, who discovered that Jack was loaded up with arterial plaque. When Jack was only 52, his vein age was 70. Today, after they helped Jack remake his lifestyle, Jack’s vein age is 49. Dr. Bale and Doneen helped improve Jack’s health by putting Jack on an exercise and nutrition program and by prescribing medication that reduced his cholesterol levels.

“Dr. Bale totally turned my life around.”

But getting Jack back in shape required more than fixing his weight and reducing the accumulation of plaque in his blood vessels. Even after these changes, Amy Doneen recommended that Jack go even further and take the deCODEme genetic test. By that time, Jack had been working with The Heart Attack Prevention Clinic for years and was in great shape. He’d step on the treadmill, and raise the pace and incline, but Jack kept going. He’d ace the stress test every time.

“If you looked at me you’d say, wow, that guy is in great shape.”

But the deCODEme test revealed something that had previously remained hidden. Jack had a significantly higher than average risk of developing diabetes. This was a louder alarm than the 3-am cigarette.

“Diabetes. That’s what killed my dad,” Jack laments.

While the result scared Jack, he says that he was quickly comforted by the fact that he knew his vulnerabilities and that enabled him to take extra preventative precautions. The test, he says, was well worth the $1000 he paid for his results.

But let’s face it. The economy is tight. Gas prices are going through the roof. Food prices keep rising. Health insurance costs are out of control. Some potential patients look at the cost of the test and wonder if it’s worth the money. After all, not everyone is a successful businessman and public speaker like Jack. But Jack has a simple answer for them.

“I was talking to my brother about this very thing. I told him, ‘Is your life worth $1000?’ Now that might not be something a doctor can say, but that’s my opinion. I think people have to look at it in perspective. They wouldn’t even blink at spending that much on a big-screen TV. And they’ll even put it on a credit card and pay for it over 30 years. So what’s the priority? I don’t look at the test as spending money. The deCODEme test is an investment in yourself.”

Jack takes the money out of the equation. His thoughts turn to his four grandchildren. He wants to watch them grow up. He understands deCODEme’s genetic test is not a silver bullet, and won’t enable him to avoid all illnesses. It’s another tool, or as Jack repeats, another arrow in Doneen and Dr. Bale’s quiver.

“It gives Dr. Bale another awesome tool to assist me on this awesome journey. And at 62 here I am. I feel fantastic.”

Jack Doughery's genetic test showed that he had a significantly higher than average risk of developing diabetes.

Lauralee Nygaard, a periodontist from Spokane, WA, says the deCODE tests are easy to take and highly cost effective but that we have to pay close attention to the results and be prepared to make some serious lifestyle changes.

Lauralee Nygaard is a dentist from Spokane, Washington. She is in her early forties and has two young children. Three years ago Lauralee had a stroke while she was performing surgery on a patient. It confirmed her suspicions about a predisposition to heart disease that she had nurtured since she was 18.

“When I was 18, I went to the doctor and said, ‘I know I’m at risk for a heart attack, my dad has hypercholesterolemia.’ The doctor laughed at me. He said, ‘you’re a skinny girl, you’re never going to have heart disease.”

A stroke at forty confirmed her worst fears: “It corroborated the fact that I knew I was at risk. I had pushed my family physician for years to be aggressively preventative with making sure I didn’t have heart disease. He always told me there was nothing they could do.”

As a dentist who had stressed the importance of preventative care for years, Lauralee was ready to practice what she had preached

Finding the right program

Lauralee had heard about the Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Clinic in Spokane, Washington from some of her patients who had been through the program there and spoken very highly of it. She was impressed from the very start:

“For me it was one of the most unique health care experiences. My first appointment was three hours long—I had never spent three hours in a physician’s office! They spent a lot of time looking at my family history, asking questions about my uncles and my aunts and other people in the family, and going over my symptoms and educating me about heart disease and we did some follow-up tests.”

After taking the deCODE test she discovered, alarmingly, that her risk for heart attack and stroke was considerably higher than the average.

The program at Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Clinic was quite unlike anything she had experienced before: “I had seen my physician annually for my entire life. I’d always had perfect blood pressure, always had perfect blood work. So, for them to say that ‘well, you had a stroke we’re not sure why’—I just thought, what did they miss? I mean there’s got to be something else. That was just really disturbing. Was I at risk because someone missed something?”

Lauralee expressed her disappointment and frustration with what she calls the ‘five-minute, drive-by doctor’s appointment’. She explains: “even if a physician wants to give you options, he’s not allowed to if he’s on certain insurance plans,” and that most physicians are restricted under the present system.

However, she insists that paying out of her own pocket at the Heart Attack & Stroke Prevention Clinic allowed nurse practitioner Amy Doneen “to have time with patients and be more preventative in terms of her approach to disease.” Lauralee adds that the costs of preventative treatment, as opposed to those incurred after an incident such as stroke or heart attack, are minimal.

The benefits of genetic testing
“To me, the benefit of doing the genetic test is that I can reduce my risk of having another stroke and permanent damage. It’s a short life, you know . . .”

deCODE offers genetic testing for a range of inheritable diseases. This, Lauralee believes, is part of a more efficient and more cost effective method of treatment.

“The motivation for me to follow through with the genetic test was the fact that my mother’s health had been failing rapidly and she had had four strokes in the last six months. She had just been diagnosed with diabetes and was not doing well. I had never really figured out why I had a stroke. Then Amy Doneen at Heart Attack Prevention Clinic suggested that atrial fibrillation (irregular heart rhythm) might have played a role. She explained to me that 30% of cryptogenic stroke diagnosis comes from atrial fibrillation and that this condition was ‘preventable’ with the right medication.”

To her surprise, Lauralee tested negative for the diabetes gene she believed she had inherited from her mother. But the test results affirmed that her stroke has not been a random catastrophe and she did indeed have a genetic disposition for atrial fibrillation. The next step was to take blood thinners that would reduce the risk of clotting after irregular heart rhythm and subsequently reduce the risk of having a stroke.

“The genetic test gave me information (that confirmed with my past stroke) that I am at risk for future strokes. Now, instead of saying, ‘Oh well, I had a stroke. I got lucky—no big deal,’ I can actually make some choices with my health care and avoid another stroke altogether.” Lauralee’s mother had suffered a series of strokes over a short period of time and she did not want to follow along the same path.

“My kids are little—I have kids that are 8 and 10 years old and I would like to be around to see them become productive adults. I think if I could gain some information, I’d be more proactive in my health—I think there’s a lot of benefit in that.”

By the same token, she believes that her children have “so many more preventative options” and could be tested at a much younger age and therefore hopefully avoid an incident altogether. She did not want them to have to wait till 40 or 50 and/or the occurrence of a massive event. Finding out early that they could be at risk would mean earlier intervention.

Modifying behavior for optimum health
Lauralee explains a healthy future is a matter of first getting as much information as possible and then modifying one’s behavior:

“I think things are changing. We’re learning more about how being aware impacts people. I think the more you can learn about your risks, the more you can modify your behavior and the more you can hopefully prevent something that’s going to harm or shorten your life.”

Of course, knowledge can be intimidating, but only if one is not willing to make lifestyle changes. Lauralee claims that the people who are frightened of what genetic testing can offer are mainly those who don’t want to change how they’re living. She admits she had to make some serious changes in her own life, changes that she frowned on several years before her stroke.

Cost effective
Lauralee says some people are naturally concerned about costs and the fact that their insurance might not pay for genetic testing. However, if you find out you are at risk before you damage anything, you can save a great deal. She believes that preventative medicine and genetic testing are highly cost effective!

“We know that a simple swab from the inside of your mouth can gauge your disease risk—that’s a very cost effective test to figure out what your disease predispositions are. Certainly, being more aggressive in prevention is going to lower health care costs over time. For example, it would have cost a lot less for me to know that I was at risk than to have 3 MRIs—in terms of health care expense. On the national scale, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke are some of the greatest issues facing health care in this country at the moment and they’re eating up a good chunk of our health care budget.

Better decisions, better health
After describing the test as “ridiculously easy,” Lauralee admitted that some fears were “a generational issue.” Younger people are much more comfortable with technology and knowledge and do not regard knowing what their genetic makeup is as threatening. People will soon learn that knowledge is power and that it allows us to take better care of our health and make better decisions. She admits, though, that any fears she might have had are allayed by a background in biology. She certainly did not shy away from being proactive: “I mean, I think that you can never ever regret what you invest in taking care of yourself. One body, one life, one chance.”

Does that mean she was glad to have an early warning?

“Yes, totally—it was a blessing. I was very fortunate I got a warning and could shape a path for myself. Not everyone does. 70% of all first heart attacks or strokes result in death for patients.”

She ends by telling us how the pharmacist reacted to her new medication regime:
“My pharmacist, who looks sixteen, said: ‘Can I ask you a personal question? Why are you taking all this medicine?’ (blood thinners, blood pressure and cholesterol medications) I said ‘you mean the medicine of an 80-year-old?—that’s because I want to live to be 80!’”