Regular health checkups are significant if you really want to look and feel good. Your overall health must be maintained to prevent diseases. For this purpose, doctors suggest regular health examinations. You need to pass through various screenings and assessments in order to prevent life-threatening diseases.
This comprehensive guide on various components of regular health checkups can help in selecting your plan. So, let’s get started to discover.
Components of Regular Health Checkups
Certainly, many health examinations are available, and they are included in the regular screening of your body.
Medical History Review
- Personal Medical History: The very first thing that any doctor wants to know are past and current medical conditions, surgeries, medications, and allergies.
- Family Medical History: Understanding genetic vulnerabilities to diseases like diabetes, heart problems, and cancer can help in discovering family medical history.
Lifestyle Assessment
- Dietary Habits: This is not the test, but an assessment of nutritional intake, which reveals any deficiencies or unhealthy eating patterns.
- Physical Activity: The dietary examination helps in discovering the level of physical activity. Accordingly, the doctor suggests appropriate exercises.
- Smoking and Alcohol Use: The screening for tobacco and alcohol ensures that you get assistance to get rid of these habits if necessary.
- Mental Health: After these screenings, mental health is monitored to see if it is stressful, depressive, or full of anxiety.
Vital Signs Check
Some screenings, like a blood pressure check, pulse rate check, are extremely important at a regular interval.
- Blood Pressure: Regular screening of your blood pressure after 30s is significant from time to time. It helps in monitoring hypertension over time, which often does not show its symptoms. But over time, it causes severe health issues. In 2017–18, it was discovered that 34% of Australian adults had high blood pressure and were on medication.
- Heart Rate: An irregular heart rate can be an indication of an upcoming danger to your health. So, this checkup is also important.
- Respiratory Rate: The respiratory disorder can be asthma, a lung infection, or an indication of some life-threatening diseases. So, the respiratory rate should also be measured from time to time.
- Temperature: Checking the temperature of your body also informs you about any infections or health issues.
Physical Examination
A general practitioner does a physical examination of the body to detect any problem or health condition.
- General Appearance: A general practitioner starts screening by observing the signs of illness.
- Skin Check: Australia is the country where the highest rates of skin cancer cases are registered in the world, which are 2 in 3 of them by the age of 70. That’s why screening for skin cancer is a necessity.
- Head and Neck Examination: The medical examination of eyes, ears, nose, throat, lymph nodes, thyroid, and carotid arteries concludes head and neck screening.
- Abdominal Exam: The screening of the abdomen can help in detecting any issues in the liver, kidneys, and other organs.
- Neurological Exam: This examination can be prescribed to assess reflexes, balance, and mental wellbeing.
Laboratory Tests
This step follows the physical examination because the physical screening shows primary symptoms, which need specific tests to prove that you’re suffering from the intended diseases.
- Blood Tests: The basic blood test helps in discovering the exact blood cell count (or complete blood count). It helps in detecting blood infections, anemia, and other hematological conditions.
- Lipid Profile: This test is helpful in measuring cholesterol levels, which mainly indicate cardiovascular risks. Consider the statistics for 2017–18, which show that 32.8% of Australians suffer from high cholesterol levels.
- Blood Sugar Levels: This helps in discovering the prospective threat of diabetes.
- Liver and Kidney Function Tests: This test can guide the doctor on how the organs are working in the body.
- Thyroid Function Tests: This test is crucial because the thyroid is a silent killer. Its test can tell how imbalanced the thyroid gland is.
- Urinalysis: This test is basically helpful in detecting any infection in the urinary tract. This can prevent kidney disease and diabetes.
Screening Tests
Screening tests can guide the discovery of life-threatening diseases.
- Breast Cancer: Mammograms are suggested for women who are between 50 and 74 and show symptoms of breast cancer. The data for 2017 shows that the incident rate of breast cancer was 129.4 per 100,000 women.
- Cervical Cancer: Pap smears and HPV testing. For cervical cancer detection, two tests – Pap smears and HPV testing are advised.
- Prostate Cancer: It typically infects men. So, doctors recommend PSA tests, especially for those who are over 50. This cancer was found to be the most common among the Australian male community, according to a 2017 report.
- Colorectal Cancer: This is the second most life-threatening cancer diagnosed in Australia. To confirm, doctors recommend faecal occult blood tests (FOBT) or colonoscopy.
Bone Density Test: This test guides doctors to confirm if the patient is suffering from osteoporosis. This condition is common in postmenopausal women and older adults. Over 1 million Australians are suffering from it.
Eye Examination: In order to detect glaucoma, cataracts, and age-related macular degeneration, an eye examination is suggested.
Hearing Test: Over years, people lose their hearing power. This is called hearing loss, which specifically hits older adults. That’s why hearing tests are conducted.
Dental Check-up: Dental checkups are vital to prevent bad breath, cavities, periodontal disease, oral cancer, or herpes. That’s why this test is necessary once a year.
Immunizations
Immunization is a preventive step, that is included in regular health check-up plans.
- Routine Vaccinations: Doctors recommend routine vaccinations to prevent flu shots, pneumococcal vaccines, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (which is whooping cough).
- Childhood Vaccinations: Every child requires basic vaccines in childhood, which can be discovered in the National Immunization Program.
Specialized Assessments
Besides normal screening, some specific tests are recommended after detecting primary symptoms. These can be the following:
- Cardiovascular Risk Assessment: The heart specialist recommends a combination of cholesterol level, blood pressure, and other factors to confirm heart disease. These tests are necessary because cardiovascular diseases account for nearly 27% of overall deaths in Australia.
- Diabetes Risk Assessment: Diabetes is a lifestyle disease, that can reduce your life by at least 10 years. It can be prevented if precautionary measures and lifestyle changes are taken in a timely manner. Using tools like the AUSDRISK can help in foreseeing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
- Mental Health Evaluation: Mood swings or mood disorders, anxiety, or other mental health conditions can adversely affect overall health. That’s why comprehensive assessments for these conditions are included in regular health checkups. This is compulsory because one in five Australians has experienced a mental or behavioural condition, according to a study in 2017–18.
Follow-up and Management
Once some medical conditions are confirmed, it becomes a necessity to strictly manage and follow up on tests.
- Chronic Disease Management: Consider a routine check up plan to manage chronic diseases, like asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. If required, your general practitioner can recommend a specialist based on the findings of your health report.
- Health Education and Counselling: Under routine checkups, education about diet, exercise, how to get rid of smoking habits, and other lifestyle factors is included.
Conclusion
Regular health checkups comprise a lot of tests and education to manage, prevent, and detect diseases in the long term. These screenings help in maintaining wellbeing.