Email
PrintBack to Basics: The Physical
You’ve been stripped down to your underwear. You have to give up all your weaknesses, fears, secrets…..and body fluids. Sharp needles pierce your skin; containers are handed to you. You’re poked, prodded -- in places you’ve never even seen. And after all that, there may be more “invasions” like a long tube up your……
Gasp! You wake up in a cold sweat. Al-Qaeda?
Nope. It’s your physical.
Geez. With that kind of perception, it’s amazing how many people are clamoring to get their preventative visit done. Many insurance companies cover physicals (Medicare does not), and many businesses require it for lower premiums. It makes economic sense to prevent problems. It’s said that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
And as more people are living longer, they want to stay healthy; therefore, the patient demand is there.
America’s physical condition has changed a lot in the last 50 years. We eat too much, work too hard, don’t get enough sleep, and sit too much. Ironically, the same scientific “progress” that allows for the miraculous health care of today has also allowed us to get complacent and soft. Yet we tend to focus on the latest technological advancements or study on how some supplement is important. Consider a local football team as an illustration. For this particular football team, tackling was a real problem. That’s what we call a fundamental. Without fundamentals, it doesn’t matter how many twists we might add—the team is still going to lose. In healthcare, without setting the patient’s fundamentals in place, it won’t matter how much technology or supplements we have. Actually, it will matter – because the costs are so much higher relying on those.
It’s All About the Fundamentals.
Two broad categories of illness cause the majority of deaths and illnesses today.
First are the diseases which affect our blood vessels, like strokes, heart attacks, aneurysms and blockages in our legs. They share three risk factors: smoking, blood pressure greater than 135/85 and high cholesterol. Control these three and you’ve accounted for a major cause of death today--arterial disease. Just eating healthy and exercising would take care of it.
“But gee, doc, can’t you just recommend some vitamin, and can’t you order a heart scan and brain scan?”
I’ve found that ordering expensive scans doesn’t really change behavior, while just sitting down with people and explaining to them their cholesterol and blood pressure does.
But guess which one costs more?
The second category of illness is cancer, with the most common being lung, breast, prostate, colon and lymphoma/leukemia. We do a lot of screening for these including mammograms at age 40. Colonoscopies and prostate exams start at 50. (Yes, if your rear end is over 50, it will need to see the doctor.)
Wouldn’t it be better though, if we can start much earlier lowering our risks, so that we don’t find any problems by those ages? Like a high fiber diet, staying away from processed meats for colon cancer and avoiding tobacco and alcohol for breast cancer? We spend a lot of time during our physicals going over those fundamentals.
With the New Year, and the new decade, in order to make a difference, we have to go back to the basics. Let’s start by going in for a check-up.
When you do, come prepared with the following information:
- Any current problems
- Family history
- Past medical history including any surgeries or hospitalizations
- Medications, allergies and Immunizations
- List any special areas you’d like to have examined. (Ok, did I just hear someone snicker?)
If everyone, including physicians, insurance companies and politicians understood how important the basics of good health were – and applied them – it’s very likely that health care may not be the monster that it is today. Wonder if they’ve had their rear-ends examined?
