Preventive health

Preventive Health Checkup

Prevention is better than cure so the saying goes. Its emphasis can be felt by the growing change our approach towards illness. The focus in Medicine has also shifted from reacting, to diagnosis, to questioning. It is about how we can predict the disease before it manifests itself. It is also about how we can make lifestyle changes to completely alter the course of the disease.

A preventive medical check is a positive and preventive step that any individual can take to defend him against disease and disability. It not only aims at diagnosis and treatment on basis of appropriate screening but also educates the patient to take charge of their health. However, a medical check merely identifies existing ailments.

It does not warn of risk of future ailments or provide holistic advice on ways to reduce existing ailments. While the medical check is a good defensive step, it is incomplete without lifestyle assessment and lifestyle modification.

By now, it is well established that absence of illness can be identified through a medical checkup. But absence of illness does not automatically indicate presence of health. There is a wide gap between Wellness and Illness and the WHO identified this as early as 1956 by saying that, “Health is not merely the absence of disease but a state of optimum physical, mental, social and spiritual wellbeing�.

There are a few things that a patient might find useful to monitor by themselves at home, so that they can trend their health status until the next health check-up is due.

• Monitor your sugars at least monthly once.

• Keep a check on blood pressure and pulse rate at random intervals.

• Maintain a healthy diet, exercise (with due clearance from the doctor) and healthy habits and sleep pattern.

• Problem specific physiotherapy stretches and exercises that are taught at the end of the preventive health check should be done regularly.

• Report any changes in vision when reading, viewing far away objects or changes in observing light, color in day/night time.

• Breast self-exams should be done regularly and any changes calls for a consult with a doctor.

• Women may maintain a monthly calendar of the menstrual cycle.

• Quarterly height and weight charts should be maintained for all growing children.

• Specific low weight calisthenics and level surface walking for the elderly (with due clearance from the doctor) should be done regularly.

• Report annually for the health checkups!

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