I saw a parallel between everyday life and the medical system I wanted to share, especially as we begin a new year.
We were on a family walk and my wife asked our daughter if she had to go to the bathroom, while my daughter was completely just minding her own business and singing "ABCD-Dinosaur" and in no way seeming like she needed to go potty. So, of course, she says yes and there we were about a half mile from home and now all she could think about was how much she needed to go potty. So I looked over at my wife and with shoulder shrugged and hands to the sky queried "Why would you ask her that now?!?!" (full disclosure - I'm sure my wife has tons of stories like this about me too)
The parallel here, one I get a lot of questions about, is for people who come in feeling completely healthy but asking to get their XYZ checked, "just to make sure". If you were to apply this kind of logic to anything else like your house or your car, you would probably find a handful of professionals who would charge you a bunch of money to look in all the nooks and crannies and either tell you everything is fine or find a bunch of unnecessary things to fix. This would be akin to a lot of healthcare providers who have found that they can bill health insurance a lot of money to run unnecessary tests on patients. But you would also find a few people who would be honest and tell you there's no point in doing the check, show you the regular areas you need to maintain and how often you should do it to keep things running well. This is how I practice and the philosophy at Kaiser.
And if you don't think the comparison between car and home maintenance to your body is fair, I'll point out that the CDC says if you are under 45, you're far more likely to die of unintentional injuries than anything else. So please do make sure you're taking care of those things.
That said, there has been a substantial amount of research done, and still ongoing, as to what is useful to do in order to prevent health conditions, mostly cancer and heart disease, from popping up.
Lots of people ask about what their "annual physical exam" should include. The term is actually a holdover from the 1920's when we knew a lot less about the harms caused by diseases as well as the testing for and treatment of those diseases. As a result, over the years we've evolved the practice of medicine to focus more on preventing diseases we know are very common.
Here you can see what should be talked about at your yearly check up for a generally healthy person. We try not to order unnecessary lab tests because often times this can lead to more unnecessary tests and medications that can potentially be harmful. I encourage you to read over this information and let me know if you have any questions.
We were on a family walk and my wife asked our daughter if she had to go to the bathroom, while my daughter was completely just minding her own business and singing "ABCD-Dinosaur" and in no way seeming like she needed to go potty. So, of course, she says yes and there we were about a half mile from home and now all she could think about was how much she needed to go potty. So I looked over at my wife and with shoulder shrugged and hands to the sky queried "Why would you ask her that now?!?!" (full disclosure - I'm sure my wife has tons of stories like this about me too)
The parallel here, one I get a lot of questions about, is for people who come in feeling completely healthy but asking to get their XYZ checked, "just to make sure". If you were to apply this kind of logic to anything else like your house or your car, you would probably find a handful of professionals who would charge you a bunch of money to look in all the nooks and crannies and either tell you everything is fine or find a bunch of unnecessary things to fix. This would be akin to a lot of healthcare providers who have found that they can bill health insurance a lot of money to run unnecessary tests on patients. But you would also find a few people who would be honest and tell you there's no point in doing the check, show you the regular areas you need to maintain and how often you should do it to keep things running well. This is how I practice and the philosophy at Kaiser.
And if you don't think the comparison between car and home maintenance to your body is fair, I'll point out that the CDC says if you are under 45, you're far more likely to die of unintentional injuries than anything else. So please do make sure you're taking care of those things.
That said, there has been a substantial amount of research done, and still ongoing, as to what is useful to do in order to prevent health conditions, mostly cancer and heart disease, from popping up.
Lots of people ask about what their "annual physical exam" should include. The term is actually a holdover from the 1920's when we knew a lot less about the harms caused by diseases as well as the testing for and treatment of those diseases. As a result, over the years we've evolved the practice of medicine to focus more on preventing diseases we know are very common.
Here you can see what should be talked about at your yearly check up for a generally healthy person. We try not to order unnecessary lab tests because often times this can lead to more unnecessary tests and medications that can potentially be harmful. I encourage you to read over this information and let me know if you have any questions.