Did you know that regular checkups are required even if you are feeling perfectly fine?

Regular checkups are routine appointments with your healthcare provider to access your full body through physical examination and laboratory tests.

It has many benefits from detecting any problem early to reduce the cost of your healthcare. All people require regular checkups, whether already having a disease or feeling completely fine.

In this post we will discuss how often you need checkups, benefits of regular checkups, and focus of these checkups in different age groups.

How often:

• Healthy individual below 40, once every three years
• Healthy individual above 40, once per year

Frequency increases if you have a particular health condition and require attention. Your healthcare provider will tell you how often you need to checkup.

Importance of regular check-ups

Early detection:

Regular checkups help detect diseases in their early stages. Treatment at this stage is most effective. Many diseases, like cancer, diabetes, and hypertension, do not have any symptoms at the early stages. When symptoms appear, the disease has progressed to the most advanced stages.

Prevention:

Certain diseases are caused by risk factors if identified and modified on time; disease can be prevented from occurring. Through regular checkups, your healthcare provider identifies those signs and advises you on time modification.

Example: A person visits his doctor completely fine. The doctor notices a rise in blood pressure, which is a risk for developing heart disease and stroke. The doctor advises him to modify his diet and lifestyle to reduce the risk of stroke and heart disease.

Personalized advice:

With regular checkups, you get personalized advice from your healthcare provider on a number of health-related topics.

Building a relationship with your Doctor

Regular checkups build strong patient-doctor relationships. This is necessary to have a deep conversation with your provider.

Reduced the cost of healthcare

Although it seems like an extra burden on your pocket to do regular checkups. But actually, it reduced the cost of healthcare. It reduces the cost of treating disease at advanced stages, requiring surgeries, hospitalization, etc.

Regular Checkup Guidelines by age group

Children and adolescents

Regular checkups in children and adolescents is very effective as well to know where the baby is normal developmentally and if there is any issue it’s better to detect it early,

·         Developmental milestones

·         Vision and hearing screening

·         Immunization and vaccination

·         Puberty problems in adolescents

·         Drug abuse in adolescents

Adults (18-64)

Adults from age 18-64 must also do visit for regular checkups to help themselves to early-detecting diseases which show no symptoms in its initial stages. But the focuss in this age group is to find out

·         Reproductive health problems

·         Mental health issues

·         Blood sugar for diabetes

·         Blood pressure measurement to prevent heart diseases

·         Problems with cholesterol and triglycerides, a risk for heart problems

Seniors (65+)

Health priorities changes to

·         Chronic diseases Management

·         Cognitive functions

·         Bone problems

·         Cancer screening

Conclusion

Regular checkups give so much benefits as described above that one think this is pure investment in your heath.

The benefits are detetion of diseases in its early phase where treatment is easy and cost effective. you also get personalized advice from your doctor and helps build a strong relationship with your provider.

If you still did not visit your doctor for routine checkup, book your appointment and make sure everything is good or you need any lifestyle or food modification.

Share your thoughts and questions redarding regular checkup will be highly appreciated.