Being healthy can mean various different things, many of us think that health is the opposite of illness, so we are healthy when we are not ill. However, according to the Worlds Health Organization, the term health goes way beyond the absence of illness, we are actually healthy when we are in a state of physical, mental and social well being. Many factors contribute to achieving optimal health such as good eating habits, regular exercise, healthy relationships genetics and regular checkups.

The importance of prevention

Being aware of our personal health is our own responsibility and it is well known that prevention is the best treatment. Regular checkups can monitor our health through tests and give our personal health provider all the information necessary so that he can indicate to us the things we should be careful about or the changes we should make to improve or maintain our health condition.

Help you detect chronic diseases

Some diseases like certain types of cancer, diabetes and heart diseases have a more successful treatment if they are diagnosed in their early stages. When you see your doctor regularly you will talk with him about your personal medical history, chronic diseases a family member of yours might have passed through and your lifestyle in general. It is important for him to know if you are a smoker, if you consume a lot of alcohol or you have problems managing your weight.

All this information will help your health provider decide if you are in a high-risk group for developing a particular disease and tell you what kind of tests you should do to monitor your health.

Reduce healthcare costs over time

As mentioned before, regular health checkups usually help you prevent and treat diseases at their early stages. As a consequence, this reduces the chances of getting sick or if you are already are diagnosed with a disease, it reduces the costs of treatment as in many cases you can avoid an expensive operation. Additionally, if you have private insurance, regular checkups might have minimum costs or no cost. With our health insurance policies with no co-payments, there are no additional fees for your regular health checkups.

Apart from money it also saves you time since a health checkup lasts only a couple of hours and you can schedule it for one day after work when a treatment or an operation can be extended and have a duration of various months.

How often should health checks be made and what tests do they include?

Regular health checks include different types of tests according to your gender, age, lifestyle, personal medical history and family history and they should be made with different frequencies depending on all the factors mentioned above.

If you don’t suffer from a chronic disease or if you don’t have a family history that puts you in a high-risk group for certain illnesses, here you have some general guidelines so that you can see how often you should visit your doctor for your regular checkup:

• Age 18-30 – once in every 2-3 years
• Age 30-50 – once in every 2 years
• Age 50 and above – once in a year

Don’t postpone your healthcare

We live in a world where environmental factors, lifestyle, eating choices, genetics and stress affect our health and well being so that it is essential for all of us to be tested regularly and be aware of our health condition at all times.

Many of us get stressed over visiting our doctor or getting the results of our health tests. Regular health checkups can reduce that anxiety since if we don’t dismiss our appointment we have nothing to be worried about. Taking care of our health helps us feel good about ourselves, improve our self-esteem and ultimately gives us a chance to live a better life.