For one reason being that the old style "annual physical" is not worth the trouble. As long ago as the 1970s, the Reader's Digest published a detailed article listing the reasons why such annual checkups are simply not worth the trouble. Most personal health care can be taken care of with basic common sense. Eat a good, balanced diet, exercise regularly, keep your weight well within normal range, get plenty of sleep and live as stress free as possible.
Experience has taught me doctors are usually not only useless but generally bastards... Therefore I only go when I really need to... which is almost never, thankfully.
If there were a way to do the blood tests without the rest of the nonsense I might bother. I can monitor my own weight and blood pressure, and once you get beyond objective tests, doctors are just guessing a disturbingly frequent percentage of the time. Unless you have some specific health complaint there's no reason for an initial checkup to even involve a doctor at all; just have a nurse practitioner draw blood and take a cup of your piss, take your blood pressure and weigh you if you can't do those things yourself, and if the tests indicate you have to go back you go back. Having a doctor at a checkup is like having a dentist at a teeth cleaning; it's an artifact of a professional licensing scam that mostly serves to severely jack up prices.
Just remember kiddies...don't keep up with it now and you'll be spending much more time with your Doctor doing much more unpleasant things than a yearly checkup has in store for you. I used to be terrified of needles...left over from a horrible experience with an appendectomy when I was 4. Now, I hope the worst thing I'll be seeing is a needle. Just suck it up and go...it's the best chance of catching stuff early, before it's to the desperate measures and ugly procedures stage.
No way I'm going to vote in a poll that assumes I don't do something, other than one choice that makes fun of me for doing it. Sorry, you have fallen pretty low here.
The thread raises a question that I have asked for years. In the UK we are encouraged to go to denitsts for regular check ups, which we usually have to pay for, yet nobody tells us to go to the GP for regular check ups. Yet the body, as opposed to just the teeth, is far more in need of regular attention. This is why I stopped going to regular dentist check ups. I was paying £18 every so many months just to be told I have great teeth. Now I only go if there's a problem (which there hasn't been) or they need a clean or whitening.
I don't understand why dentistry is considered separate from the rest of the medical community. Yes dentists are specialists, just like ophthalmologists, urologists, gynecologists, cardiologists, podiatrists ... Yet they seem to be excluded from general practitioner based flow chart of care. GPs handle the minor stuff, recognize when a problem requires a specialist, and refer patients accordingly. For whatever reason dentists are outside of that system. Why? On a side note - My grandfather lived to be ninety-three, I once asked (half-jokingly) if he had any health advice. Without missing a beat and with complete sincerity he replied, take care of your teeth.
It is a general inquiry / investigation. The doctor many times will talk to you, maybe order some blood draws to screen for a variety of things (STDs, liver enzymes, cholesterol, any other indicators). They doc will also do a physical investigation. From there the doc will then want to take action if necessary. As I turn 40 this September, I get the "rotor rooter" treatment As for why I havent gone in the past, sheer, unadulterated laziness / lack of interest.
I'm in a bit of a unique position due to my career. I get a comprehensive physical every six months and an EKG once a year. The results of all of it get transmitted to the FAA in OKC where it is reviewed anew by a gub'mint flight surgeon. In addition, I am required BY LAW to report any visits to medical professionals I make in between my flight physicals, for anything and for any reason whatsoever. Assuming I am exercising the privileges of my flying certificates, that is. I like to fly, but let me tell you, if I had to pick my post-military career all over again, flying might have been relegated to a recreational activity....
Yeah...on those rare occasions where I start thinking maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to get checked out while I still have insurance, I'll usually forget about it before I get around to acting on it. If I said that it would be a lie. Insurance still comes out of my paycheck. More like I don't care to hear it. I'm not going to change my lifestyle drastically for anything, so there's not much point in hearing that I need to. I donated plasma for over a year, and they use some pretty damned big spikes for that. I'll wave my junk at anyone who's paid not to laugh. Hopefully the doc isn't dumb enough to say "overweight for your age and height" without acknowledging muscle mass. Meh. Scold this. That's how much I care about reproachful chastising. Doesn't happen often, but it's never a welcome experience. Not someone who carries much dignity anyway. I can fuck up my liver just fine without your cholesterol meds, thank you very much. Neither apply.
What? You got a problem with girls? Actually I used that phrase because it was the exact wording I heard admonished to a group of young ladies and it stuck with me while thinking about why women are more likely to get regular check-ups and why men tend to be (or at least pretend to be) more cavalier about their health. My point being that there is shaming on both sides of the equation here. Guess that subtlety is too much for some.
It takes me 5 min to get a blood test done, results are sent to the doctor once they are looked at, and he calls me if there is something to be concerned with. How hard is that?
Uh, hate to tell you, but the teeth and the mouth are a portal to the rest of the body, especially the heart. I have known several folks, including my father, who didn't take care of their teeth, and wound up in the cardiac unit with endocarditis and other nasty stuff. So at least get the teeth cleaned every 6 months.
It's the wiring of the brain. Men will solve the problems, once there is one. Think strike force. If they don't feel bad or see something that makes them think there's something wrong, they won't do a thing.
Get your teeth cleaned or checked? I just get mine checked. Why should I pay the dentist $75 to clean my teeth when I brush every single day and haven't had cavities in 10 years?
I actually like going to the dentist. He doesn't give me bad news and his assistant is a dead ringer for Kaylee from Firefly and she gets my teeth cleaner than I ever could. Maybe if a check-up incorporated a massage or a trip to a spa or something health-wise it would be more of an event to look forward to.
Well, every dentist I've ever gone to "just for cleaning" always checked my teeth and did xrays at least once a year. So, yeah, cleaning which includes checking. Oh and seeing the optometrist every year can help as well; when they look at the retina they can sometime spot that you are in the very early stages of things like hypertension and diabetes.
I don't really do "regular check-up exams"...certainly not annually. If I have a specific issue or concern, I'll go. Periodically, when I feel it's "time", then I'll schedule a check-up appt. Usually this is no more often than every 2 years. I mean, realistically, I know what the Dr. is gonna say anyway...lose some weight, eat well, get plenty of rest and exercise. Why waste the time and $ just to hear him speak the words? Of course, as I age, I find more aches & pains anyway, so I end up going to see him for that stuff. But if I'm feeling good...why bother?
It's the stuff that is sneaky and insidious that you have to worry about. I felt good for years - and had a BP of 170/100. I mean, just a little headache every now and again and the Tylenol took care of that. And I'm a nurse and I know better. Trust me - there are some things that you don't and can't spot without a checkup. And there are other things that some of the docs just want to do to make themselves feel needed.
It's a good idea to get a baseline from your doctor, but if everything's normal and you have no other symptoms, you can monitor your own BP at home, as well as glucose and cholesterol.
I get my blood pressure and cholesterol checked at work (I help set up and run health checks by our occupational therapist). Apart from looking at my ears and tongue and holding my bollox when I cough I dont see what more use a doctor might be.
You can check yourself for hernias as well. Plenty of websites can walk you through it or you can ask your doctor. It's a pretty easy condition to diagnosis.
