How Do You Know If You Are Healthy?

I am perfectly healthy. Why do I need a Doctor’s health check?
Think of your annual health check like your body’s report card – it tells you if everything is on track, and also warns you of any tell-tale signs of illness. A good health check, undertaken with a well-qualified and thorough physician, helps you catch signs of impending disorder, which if tackled right away, can prevent irreparable damage at a later stage.

Everyone presents a battery of tests. How do I know what’s relevant and why is a doctor integral to a health check?
There are over 2,000 lab tests that one can do. However, when a test is not doctor-mandated, these are often unnecessary, and worse, harmful. The ability to connect the dots across various test results remains a specialized skill, and a well-qualified physician who understands your risk profile focuses on doing exactly that. A thorough protocol-driven clinical examination by a doctor is therefore the cornerstone of any health evaluation.
The philosophy for health checks, is therefore expected to be – everything you need, and nothing you don’t. So, a CT scan is not ‘routine’ just because it’s available. On the contrary, every exposure to a CT scan is the equivalent of 300 chest x-rays, and is quite harmful!

How will my health check be different from my friend’s?
As we grow older, we are exposed to various health risks peculiar to our age group, marital status, gender, occupation, lifestyle, environment and very significantly, genetic predisposition. For example, if your family has a history of cancer, specific cancer risk markers may be built into your health check to detect any early abnormalities.
This information has been provided by Healthspring Community Medical Centres.

 

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