Especially when you consider yourself to be in top shape, going to the hospital for a scheduled health visit seems like you’re ‘doing too much’. Visiting the cardiologist or the ear nose and throat clinic feels like a burden when you think check-ups are only for ill people.
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Here are a few reasons you shouldn’t be ignoring your health check-ups:
Early Discovery of Health Challenges
Health issues, when discovered on time, can be very easily managed.
But if you keep ignoring scheduled check-ups, how would these challenges be discovered? With regular doctor visits, diseases are diagnosed before they become too serious, and you can subsequently be encouraged on how to prevent disease progression.
Screenings for these diseases are conducted on the basis of your age, sex, past medical history, and lifestyle risk factor/choices.
Because there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to it, you would have to see a doctor to ascertain your own risk factors and appropriate line of management.
Reduced Healthcare Costs Over Time
This is what happens when you make it a point of duty to schedule regular appointments with the doctor: your healthcare costs get reduced over time.
You ask: HOW?
Well, instead of visiting the doctor once in 5 years and accruing giant bills because of a backlog of tests that should be carried out and treatment plans that ought to have been instituted, visiting frequently ensures the generation of small bills over time. Hence, you save money over time. As a matter of fact, you could reduce your chances of having surgery (or reduce the extent of surgical interventions by making some other changes/ use of medications)- if you have a surgically inclined condition, by being regular on follow-up visits.
Helps Identify Stress-Related Conditions and Gives You Advice on How to Handle Them
The pace of today’s world is increasing astronomically. With so much to do, it’s no wonder that lots of people are stressed!
Work-life balance is almost a mirage, and you might be wondering what to do.
How about a visit to the doctor? Maybe some health conditions you’re dealing with are as a result of some lifestyle choices- nothing which good sleep, food, multivitamins and a couple of other medications cannot fix! In fact, sometimes, your challenges would be resolved with advice/following some simple instructions.
It Helps You Stay Informed About Your Health
As an active participant in your healthcare, you should always be kept abreast of current developments about your health. An informed individual is often able to make healthier choices and ignoring your check-ups is one way of saying no to that.
For example, ignoring ear nose and throat concerns for a long time can land you in the emergency room after causing lots of problems.
However, if the issue had been detected on time and treated properly by a doctor instead of shelved, with the thought that ‘it’s nothing serious’, it wouldn’t become such a difficult thing to take care of- or increase your financial burdens.
Not only is it a wise choice to be aware of your health, but it is also a smart financial choice!
Limits Your Risk of Complications
When you visit the hospital regularly for checkups as at when due, you have a lower risk of complications from chronic medical conditions like diabetes mellitus or hypertension; much like a farmer who constantly takes care of his farm has a lower risk of having the farm overgrown with weeds!
These complications are like weeds, and if you’re keen on your health enough to monitor it, you give yourself a better shot at living a better life devoid of complications. This is one big secret difference between people with the same disease who either develop complications, or live relatively free of same; those who have been noted to live free of complications are very keen on monitoring their health. It also abolishes fear of the unknown.
Increases Your Shots at Getting Cured
Being managed for a chronic medical condition e.g. prostate cancer (or any other form of cancer)? It might seem like the end of the world, and as the tendency to seek into a depressive state increases, you begin to feel like there’s no hope for you. Not true!
If you brace yourself up, enough to go for those follow-up visits in good spirits, you increase your own chances at being cured or going into remission. Whatever the case is, never say never!
Who Should You Visit for a Medical Check-Up?
The right answer is your health care provider or a specialist in the particular field you are having challenges. We sometimes take for granted that our bodies need rest and some more help in terms of medical intervention.
Medical check-ups shouldn’t be seen as inconveniences; proper check-ups are tools to ensure our healthy living!
We all want to live long, healthy lives; don’t we?
