When and what medical tests do you need at what age by senior helpers in home care of brick nj , toms river nj jackson nj manchester nj

When and what medical tests do you need at what age by senior helpers in home care of brick nj , toms river nj jackson nj manchester nj

When and what medical tests do you need at what age

- While a lot of people stress about going to see the doctor each year, the truth is that preventative care is often much cheaper and can end up saving your life in the long run. Our Caregivers are in the home of the elderly and these questions  come up all the  all  the time. Dr. Janis Coffin, a primary care physician and the medical director of the Department of Family Medicine at Georgia Health Sciences University, says both men and women should get a yearly physical and their vital signs should be taken. “That includes your height, weight, your blood pressure and calculation of your BMI, which is your Body Mass Index,” Coffin says. “And the reason I’m saying this is because we have a problem with obesity which is an epidemic throughout the United States.” The American Heart Association recommends everyone, whether they are 2 or 82, should get a calculation of your BMI, Coffin says. “If your BMI is between 25 to 29, that is considered a healthy weight,” she says. “But if you have a BMI greater than 30, that is considered overweight. And if you have a BMI greater than 35 that is considered obese. And so they are saying, as primary care physicians, we are not doing a good job. We are not checking people’s BMI, thus we are not getting people to do lifestyle modification. “Physicians need to do a better job counseling their patients on diet and exercise to get them into a healthy BMI to reduce their risk of diabetes and heart disease.” Along with taking your vital signs, physicians should also review each patient’s immunization status. “Studies have shown that people under the age of 18 are 95 percent immunized, which means most of the schools do a very good job in that if you don’t bring in an immunization chart and it’s up to date, they are not going to let you in school,” Coffin says. “So 95 percent of people under the age of 18 are properly immunized, but only 5 percent of adults over the age of 18 have proper immunizations.” Many adults have not received a tetanus shot, Tdap vaccination or meningococcal vaccination in years, she says. “Also, when you come in, we are supposed to ask you, ‘Do you smoke? Do you drink? Do you wear a seatbelt?’ We want to counsel people on lifestyle behavior to include tobacco, alcohol, sexual activity, are they wearing a seatbelt in the car and kind of preventative measures as well,” Coffin says. Women and men should also have their blood pressure taken starting at the age of 18. “It used to be that we would tell people if their blood pressure is 140 over 90 that they are doing good,” she says. “But now there is a committee called the Joint National Committee, or the JNC, and they gave the recommendation that a normal blood pressure is 120 over 80. “Now, you have prehypertension if your upper number is between 120 and 139 and your low number is between 80 and 89. So if you come in with a blood pressure of 130 over 85, I’m supposed to counsel you that, ‘Hey listen, you are not hypertensive, but you have prehypertension, which means you need to cut out the salt, start exercising and lose some weight.’” These are suggestions that most patients do not want to hear, but that advice could help you avoid becoming hypertensive, she says. “When you hit 140 over 90 with a blood pressure, you are already having stage one hypertension and you probably need to be on treatment for that, to include medication,” she says. As for women, they should begin having a yearly pap smear at the age of 21 or three years after their first sexual encounter to check for cervical cancer. “They say you should get a yearly pap smear until age 30 and if you have at least three normal pap smears in a row, you can go every two to three years,” Coffin says. “But if you have ever had an abnormality, you should get it every year thereafter.” Sexually active adults should also continue to get screened for sexually transmitted diseases. “We are on the rise with some STDs,” Coffin says. “And some of these STDs are in older individuals, too. I’m talking about people in their 50s and 60s who are divorced and now they are dating again. We are getting people in their older ages that are obviously sexually active with all of the Viagra and things that are out there, but they are also getting STDs.” For mammograms, the American Cancer Society recommends to start screening women at 40 and to get a yearly mammogram thereafter. And for both men and women, starting at age 50, the American Cancer Society recommends some kind of colorectal cancer screening, she says. One question Coffin often receives is when a patient should start screening for cholesterol. “Anyone who has risk factors for high cholesterol — so if you are overweight that is a risk factor; if you have a family history, that is a risk factor; if you have high blood pressure, that is a risk factor — they recommend starting cholesterol screens between the ages of 20 and 45,” Coffin says. “Because of our obesity epidemic, we are getting teenagers who are becoming diabetic and they have a stronger risk of having like heart attacks in their 30s. People do not realize that the No. 1 killer of men and women is heart disease.” For men over the age of 45, they may want to consider taking a baby aspirin to help reduce their risk of a heart attack, but people should always talk to their physician before taking an additional over-the-counter medication, Coffin says. Women at age 50 or 55 may also be a candidate for a baby asprin to protect against heart disease, she says. All of these tests can help patients lead longer, healthier lives, Coffin says. “There are a lot of patients, because of the economy right now, they don’t have insurance and, because they don’t have insurance, they are not going to their physician for a regular check up,” she says. “So we are missing out on those percentage of patients that have diabetes and high blood pressure that we should be treating now, but unfortunately we don’t treat them until they come into the ER and they have their heart attack. “We need people to come in earlier and get a physical and not wait until it is an emergency situation.”