From cholesterol screening to a thyroid disease test, it is incredibly important that you do all that you can to take care of your health. After all, at the end of the day, your health is all that you’ve got, and caring for it well can lead you on to many more years of health and prosperity and even a longer lifespan. Unfortunately, all too many people skip regular doctor’s appointments at which they would normally receive something like a cholesterol screening or even a vascular screening and some red flags might be missed in the opportune moment. Conditions like high cholesterol can be treated – and often very successfully, at that – but can only be properly diagnosed with a tool such as cholesterol screening. Without adequate cholesterol screening (as well as various other screenings to help isolate and treat chronic conditions and diseases) it becomes harder to treat the problem in the first place, allowing it to become worse and worse the longer that doctors and treatment in general are avoided. And the generation of people who are currently in their fifties now have considerably higher rates of things and conditions like heart disease, blood pressure problems, and even diabetes than their parents’ generation did. In fact, data shows that of the population of those who have hit the age of sixty five or who have exceeded it, as many as seventy percent have at least one chronic condition that they are currently managing and will need to take care of for the rest of their lives. It is even common that someone who is considered to be of an advanced age will have more than one chronic conditions – this is certainly not unheard of.
Conditions that can lead to heart disease are all too common among the population of aging people here in the United States and these conditions range from high blood pressure to high cholesterol levels, thus necessitating the need for things such as cholesterol screening as part of a preventative health screening. In fact, recent data shows that if you are a person that has been diagnosed with high cholesterol, your chance of developing heart disease and then potentially having a heart attack more than doubles – it triples. And high blood pressure, which can also lead to events such as heart attack or stroke, is even more common and has been diagnosed in as many as seventy five million adults in the United States. Preventative screening services such as cholesterol screening can help to combat this, and can prevent heart disease from developing and advancing and, as it ultimately too common, ending your life.
And the threat of heart disease should be taken very seriously as it now leads to a total of more than six hundred thousand deaths in just one year in the United States alone. This means that heart disease in the United States causes as many as twenty five percent of all American deaths, a truly astronomical number. And the number of heart attacks sustained is even higher (as not everyone who experiences a heart attack will die, especially if it is the first time that their body has experienced such an event). As many as eighty eight thousand women who are between the ages of forty five to sixty four (which is still relatively young) alone have had at least one heart attack over the course of the last year, and many have had even more. In total, more than seven hundred and thirty five thousand people will have at least one heart attack before the year has reached its logical conclusion – and even more people will have a heart attack in the year that follows.
Going to see your doctor at wellness centers such as for a vascular test on legs or for other disease screening can help to prevent not only heart disease but the chance of a heart attack, especially if you have any of the risk factors. Tools like regular cholesterol screening can be hugely advantageous, as they can pick up on a problem before it spirals and becomes out of hand and something that is much more difficult to bring under control.