The 1-Minute Test to Understand the Connection Between Your Childhood, Health Risks & Early Mortality

How could there be a test that indicates early mortality, 19 years early, and I’ve never heard of it?

Photo & Art: Margaret Bellafiore

I’m into health, have avoided red meat for 30 years, drink lots of water, floss, do yoga and take vitamins.

I’m a reader and writer into healing and wellness. I’ve been to doctors, nurses, therapists, yoga teacher and chiropractors.

Surely, if there’s a test to assess risk of dying 19 years early, on average, wouldn’t I have heard of it?

Well there is and I hadn’t.

It’s the ACE test.

It doesn’t require a blood draw, fancy equipment or even a doctor’s appointment. In fact it’s a mere 10-question survey really. The results can indicate risks of lung cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disease and broken bones.

That seems kind of important.

But honestly, it’s the early mortality of 19 years that gets me. I don’t want to die 19 days or weeks or even months early. But years?

19 years!!!!!

That’s a huge expanse of time. If I’ve got a risk of that I’d like to know.

The ACE test was developed as the result of a joint effort between Dr. Robert Anda of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Vincent Felitti of Kaiser Permanante.

The rest of the article is at Elephant Journal. where I’m doing a many-part series on the ACE Test & Study, lifelong health issues and ways to improve health even with early trauma.

Nancy Slonim Aronie (friend, mentor, beautiful soul, writer & author of Writing from the Heart) and I are co-writing a book titled: Your Childhood is Making You Fat, Sick & Dead: Writing (from the Heart) to Reverse the Curse of Childhood Adversity.

Margaret Bellafiore and I have done work together at Mobius on the ACE test and the way trauma impacts the body. This has been wonderful and informative. We hope to get grants (and are applying) to do more educational and interactive art shows to playfully and through art concretize some of these abstract contacts. Our first show is reviewed at the Suzi Looks at Art website here.