Why should One undergo a Health Check-up?

Many think that health checks are costly, or they feel they are fine. People only do health check-ups when they have any visible symptoms. Due to fast-paced lifestyles and busy schedules, people often neglect or forget to take care of their health. And this is where an annual or general health checkup comes into play. Here the main aim is to track and keep individuals healthy, detect any serious health problems, and take necessary action to prevent them from getting serious.

Health problems are constantly increasing in rural and urban populations due to multiple factors ranging from urbanization, food habits, new viruses, and genetic factors. Hence early detection of a health issue is quite vital in the treatment and assessing the well-being of the individual.

What is a health Checkup?

In Simple Terms, a Health checkup is to visit a clinic or doctor to check the overall health of our body parts and assess the risk of any present or developing diseases. Multiple factors such as age, family history, diet, and lifestyle choices impact the body. Health checkup for senior citizens is more important than younger individuals as they reach a certain age. There is a higher probability that a person is diagnosed with a harmful disease. Hence a full body checkup is very important to diagnose any health issue or disease.

Types of health check-ups:

Generally depending on the individual history and current condition doctor will recommend tests for diagnosis. It’s always to important get a correct checkup for living a longer and healthier life. A health checkup typically includes a sequence of tests to check your cholesterol levels, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and other vital signs.

A few important tests are mentioned below -

• CBC or hemogram are blood tests that check the overall blood health and detect any diseases like leukemia, anemia, and infection.
• Urine routine tests help to diagnose infections and kidney disorders, liver problems, and others.
• Lipid Profile helps in measuring the cholesterol levels and triglycerides in the blood. High cholesterol often leads to cardiac issues.
• Blood sugar is very important to check when it goes higher or lower below the normal range, especially in diabetes. Higher sugar levels can affect many parts of the body and cause serious damage if left untreated.
• Liver Profile helps to screen the enzymes and proteins secreted by the liver and checks its overall health.
• Essential Nutrients test is done to find any deficiency in vitamins or minerals which are micronutrients essential for the health of the individual.
• Cancer Screening panel looks for any changes in the body that could be a sign of cancer. Few blood tests are there which can screen a few of the cancers in the body such as cervical cancers etc.
• STD (sexually transmitted diseases) screening is essential for the sexual health of individuals and for the detection of diseases such as HIV, syphilis, etc.  Annually in India, around 6% of the adult population is infected with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
• Breast examination and Pap smear for women is a must for the age of women after 30 as early detection of breast cancer and cervical cancer aids in successful treatment and recovery.

What are the benefits of health check-ups?

It turns out that regular health check-ups are a better option to keep your body in good condition and detect any disease earlier than it's late. We don’t think much about our health, but regular health check-ups are very important for any medical treatment.

Some of the advantages of health check-up include:

• Prevention of any health issues.
• Reduce the cost of healthcare treatment for an individual
• Early detection of a life-threatening disease such as cancer etc.
• Improves the health and life span of an individual.
• Makes us adapt healthier lifestyle methods to be healthy.

Conclusion:

The health-checkup main goal is to prevent any illness and its repercussions by applying changes to lifestyle for living a healthy life. It has been observed that people who don’t do regular check cups are more prone to attract disease than the one who does. In cases like cancer, early-stage detections are more important than the last stage because it saves lives whereas final-stage patients have a lower probability of survival. Hence it is very important to go for a health check-up periodically through which one can get the right assessment of health and lead a healthy life.