When to get a check-up (and when to relax)

There are two popular strategies for health anxiety: test everything yearly, or test nothing until something hurts. Both feel decisive. Neither is medicine. Here is the middle path we actually practice.

What a good check-up is

A conversation first, then a short, targeted set of measurements chosen by your age, history and family patterns — not a fishing trip through every scanner in the building. Over-testing is not caution; it finds shadows that lead to worry and procedures with risks of their own. The right test, once, at the right interval, is the entire craft.

A calm schedule for most adults

In your 20s–30s: blood pressure every couple of years; cholesterol and blood sugar once as a baseline, then as advised; dental and skin checks; vaccinations kept current.
In your 40s: the same, more regularly — plus a conversation about heart-risk scoring, and screening starts appearing on the horizon.
50 and beyond: bowel and breast/prostate screening per guidelines, eye pressure, hearing when it whispers, and an honest review of sleep, mood and movement — the three quiet giants.

Family history moves these timelines forward; good results stretch them out. That is why the plan is personal, and why it takes one unhurried visit a year — often less — to maintain.

When to simply come in

Unexplained weight loss, blood where blood should not be, a change that persists past a few weeks, chest pressure on exertion, or the sentence ‘this is not like me’. That last one is real clinical data — you are the world’s leading expert on your own baseline.

And when the results are good? Believe them. Relaxing is a legitimate medical outcome. It might be our favourite one to deliver.