If you've never had a routine medical check-up before, there are many reasons to consider having a comprehensive assessment of your health and wellbeing at various stages of life, as there may be some issues you are not aware of. Health checks can identify potential problems before they become more serious issues, allowing surgeons to perform treatments or recommend lifestyle changes such a losing weight or giving up smoking, while conditions are still likely to be preventable.
Even if you are not concerned about your health at this stage of life, having a health check and demonstrating your good state of physical health and fitness can be beneficial when applying for life insurance policies, medical insurance and similar policies based on health risk, as insurers will see evidence that you are less likely to cash in on your policy and may offer lower rates. For most people however, health checks are carried out with the purpose of identifying any problems and helping them to make positive changes to enjoy longer and healthier lives.
Various factors may be involved in determining whether you require a health check, including your age and gender and whether there is a history of hereditary conditions in your family, which you are worried you may be affected by yourself. Certain types of health checks are recommended every year or even more frequently for people of all ages, such as dental checks, while others are more specific to certain age groups, divided by gender.
For example, men aged 18 to 39 are usually recommended to undergo a brief physical and blood pressure test every two to three years, compared to every one to two years for men aged 40 to 65 and annually for older men. As people become older, the number of health checks tends to increase, with over 40s often being required to submit stool samples and have checks for visual acuity and age-related cancers, such as colon cancer.
A health check is not limited to the physical body either, and mental health assessments are becoming ever more commonplace as routine parts of check-ups. Mental health checks are not primarily designed to diagnose specific mental health issues, but rather to give doctors, patients and their families an overall idea of a person's emotional wellbeing and other aspects of cognitive functioning, such as memory. These health checks may be carried out by your general practitioner or by specialised psychiatric doctors and other mental health specialists.
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