Word: checkups
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About a??year??ago, my doctor put me on the statin drug Lipitor. My LDL--the bad cholesterol--was a bit high, and diet and exercise hadn't reduced it very much. The drug worked. At my last checkup, about a month ago, my LDL had plunged...
...load to carry, even on a 6-ft. 9-in. frame. His family history worked against him too. Both his parents have high blood pressure, and his father and brother are diabetic. And he didn't do himself any favors by allowing seven years to elapse since his last checkup. When his persistent fatigue finally drove him to a doctor, he learned the wages of so much neglect. His blood pressure was topping out at a monitor-popping 166/120, and he was in the early stages of heart failure...
...years ago, my mother went for her annual checkup and added a new word to her vocabulary--osteopenia. She was well aware of osteoporosis, the bone thinning that occurs with age, but had never heard of its precursor. Having osteopenia meant she had low bone mass and was at greater risk of developing osteoporosis and perhaps breaking a hip or other bones in the years ahead...
...SURPRISING THING about the annual checkup is that most medical experts now agree it's a waste of time. Many health organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians and the U.S. Public Health Service, no longer recommend such examinations, and more than 20 years of studies have found no evidence that they provide a long-term benefit if you're a healthy adult, even one over 50. "The problem with the old way of doing the annual checkup is that it's one size fits all," says Dr. Russell Harris, director of the program on prevention...
Still, who among us wouldn't feel shortchanged if we arrived for a checkup and were never even asked to unbutton our shirts? Dr. Christine Laine, a Philadelphia internist and senior deputy editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine, understands that the odds of discovering a serious problem by listening to a healthy patient's heart and lungs during a checkup are slim, but she listens anyway. Laine says the ritualistic wielding of the stethoscope on bare skin fosters an emotional bond between patients and the person they're relying on for their medical well-being. "And anyway," she says...