Recently, George Lundberg, MD Editor-at-Large for MedPage Today posed a very intriguing question when he asked, “What is the year 2011’s best diagnostic and therapeutic medical device?”

Is it the PET scanner?
How about robotic surgery that can perform complex surgery remotely?
Maybe a GI endoscope that can inspect your insides from stem to stern?
What about drug eluting-eluting stents that promise to keep clogged arteries clear as long as you live?
Maybe the trusty stethoscope?
Could it be the contrast MRI?
Maybe the trusty old X-ray machine?
Or perhaps the CT total body scanner that hopes to find all that ails you?

Actually it is none of these wonderful technologies, each one a marvelous invention. Yet these exert title effect on the on our existence from birth to death.

Amazingly, the very best diagnostic and therapeutic device is one most of us have in our own homes. It is also very easy to use and inexpensive to boot — the bathroom scale!

We all need to use it in the privacy of our home every day and then recognize and act on the results! When we do this, it can change our life and our health for the better by preventing obesity and lowering our risk for: heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and stroke, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, depression and various cancers to name a few.

All of this would come at almost no cost to ourselves, the government, or our health insurance companies. Dr. Lundberg concluded: “What a deal. A real medical miracle machine. Use it … every day. And don’t let your number rise.”

He is absolutely right. But he didn’t go far enough! It is well and good to know the actionable results from the scales, but we must act on them. To do that requires another miracle–the daily application of the grace of Jesus Christ.