I hope March brings some nice, warm, and sunny spring weather. Spring is the beginning of a cycle of life. Trees and flowers will start to bloom. People do spring cleaning to make their homes brighter and cleaner. So appropriately, we need to start spring with a clean bill of health.
Do you value your health more than your car? I see people at the car wash cleaning all the dirt off after the rainy season. I see people taking their car in for 3000 mile maintenance, including an oil change, tire rotation, and replacing whatever is needed to make their car run smoothly and not breakdown.
However, there are a lot of patients out there that I haven’t seen in our clinic in over a year. Some excuses are “I am healthy, I don’t feel sick, I am too busy, I hate needles, I don’t want to know what is going on with my health,” and the worst excuse – “I don’t like to going to the doctor.” What is that all about? How many times have you washed your car and gotten an oil change in the last year? 5 or 6 times? Yet you don’t have time or are too busy to come get an annual physical for your body, which is a far more complicated machine than your automobile.
Feeling healthy is not an excuse either. We have found that some of our patients have been walking around with severe high blood pressure. This is a ticking time bomb for a stroke. I have found skin cancer, breast cancer, severe heart murmurs, and thyroid mass just by doing an exam. Blood work during a physical has revealed diabetes, high cholesterol, thyroid problems, vitamin D deficiency, iron deficiency, and much more. Most of these medical conditions do not cause any symptoms so you won’t even know if you have them. By then, it is too late for early prevention.
I hope I drove my point home. I believe in having annual physicals.Most insurance companies pay for a physical to be done every year, as a preventative exam. Call and make an appointment for your physical exam, once a year. It might save your life.
Sincerely,
Dr.Erik Suh
