All in the genes?

Having lulled me into a false sense of security, in due course it will cause my vital organs to shut down and my innards implode and before I know it I'll be communicating with a roll of the eyes and taking my meals through a plastic tube.

Such fears are irrational I know that.

Yet in the last few years alone I've had CAT scans and colonoscopies, MRIs and ECGs, chest X-rays and sleep studies, turbine and tonsillectomies, and paid so many visits to my GP that he once joked about inviting me to the office party.

I've sought the advice of neurologists, ophthalmologists, dermatologists, rheumatologists, podiatrists, pulmonary surgeons, Ear, Nose and Throat experts, acupuncturists, chiropractors, hypnotists and holistic healers and on top of that I've even been to Lourdes!

And every specialist consultation involved that nerve-wracking moment when they shut the door, plucked the test results from the file, and uttered those five truly terrifying words: "There is nothing wrong with you."

Because the one thing a hypochondriac can't bear to hear it's that he's fit and well.

Risk assessment

And if there is one thing more irritating that that, it is when your bodily fluids instead of underperforming start to steal the show eliciting gasps of admiration for everything from the colour of the urine to the consistency of the stools, which is what happened to me.

Yet instead of proving a source of comfort, it made me more convinced the medics had missed something.

So it came as a considerable relief to hear about a company that could take a small sample of your saliva and use it to assess your risk of getting any one of nearly 100 different diseases.

With almost feverish excitement I gathered my saliva sample and cheque and sent them off to the lab and started pacing up and down. Then a few days ago up popped an email with the results.

Of the wide variety of diseases they test for it is clearly the scary stuff that people are most drawn to, the results for the big two - Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease - were locked away behind several pages of explanation and qualification and even required their own password.