Celtic Curse

PLEASE NOTE: This article does not say Randy Travis has hemochromatosis. As you may know, Randy Travis is a successful American country music singer, songwriter and actor (if you didn't know, check out the Randy Travis page on Wikipedia). You may also know that Mr. Travis has had some serious health problems of late, notably a stroke and brain surgery after being admitted to hospital in Texas with  presumptive cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure . Naturally, I was saddened to hear of Mr. Travis' health problems, particularly since they are pretty severe for someone who is relatively young (when you get to 6o, as I did recently, then 50-something is relatively young). However, what made me sit up and pay close attention was three pieces of information: An article I had recently read, about cardiomyopathy and hemochromatosis. Mention of a family history of heart problems by one of the doctors treating Mr. Travis. The Wikipedia reference to the fact that Mr. Travis

On the website Yahoo! Answers , I recently saw a question about hemochromatois that I thought I could answer. someone had written "Haemochromatosis: told I may have it, does anyone know anything about the testing scale for it?" There was a more specific question: "the haemochromatosis result was something like 145, thing is the hospital here only run further tests (genetic test according to the nurse) if the result is higher than 170 or something." I spent about an hour or so writing an answer, only to find that, when I went to post the answer, the question had been closed to further answers. Darn! But then I thought, why not post the answer here, since it seems to come up quite often. So here's what I wrote: Testing for hemochromatosis (haemochromatosis) Hemochromatosis is "a disease that results from excessive amounts of iron in the body (iron overload)." That's the definition used by the Iron Disorders Institute , a non-profit group in America t