What is the difference between preventive care and physical examination?

To put it bluntly, the core difference between the two is that physical examination is a staged health "demining", and the goal is to discover existing abnormalities.； Preventive care is a health "moat" throughout the entire life cycle, with the goal of reducing the risk of disease from the source.

Take the annual physical examination we often do, for example. The several tubes of blood drawn, the ultrasonic CT done, and the various tumor markers checked are essentially comparing your physical indicators at the time of the examination with the medical standard values ​​to see if there are any lesions that have emerged or are even hidden deeper. I met a young man who had just turned 30 when I was attending a consultation at a community health center. He usually thought he was strong and had nothing wrong with him. However, the physical examination showed that his fasting blood sugar had reached the critical value of pre-diabetes. This is the role of physical examination - it can tell you "what is wrong with your body now", but it will not automatically solve this problem.

The next step to solve this problem is to rely on preventive health care. For this young man, we adjusted his daily carbohydrate intake, required him to run 3 kilometers at least three days a week, changed his habit of drinking iced Coke before going to bed every day, and set a follow-up plan for him to measure fingertip blood sugar once a month. These are all included in the category of preventive care. Even if all the indicators in your physical examination are normal, taking the initiative to control salt and oil, staying less sedentary, getting flu shots regularly, and women doing regular HPV screenings are all preventive health care actions. It does not need to wait for you to have abnormalities before it intervenes. It means putting effort into daily life and reducing the possibility of getting sick little by little.

Now there are two extreme schools of thought regarding these two things. One group thinks that "it's enough for me to get a high-end physical examination worth tens of thousands of dollars every year. I should exercise and drink every day." The other group thinks that "I exercise every day and do health care, so there is no need to waste money on physical examinations." In fact, both ideas are pitted. Just two months ago, I took on a middle-level employee who works in the Internet. I undergo the most expensive VIP physical examination every year. The reports for the past two years were all green, so I felt that my health was good. I slept 4 hours a day for most of the year and drank liquor with my clients. This year, the physical examination revealed severe fatty liver and the transaminases were more than twice as high. If he had done some daily health care, he would not have progressed so fast. On the other hand, there is an aunt in my community who pays more attention to her health than anyone else. She consumes Baduanjin, health-preserving tea, and imported enzymes every day. She feels that her body is in better shape than young people. She hasn’t had a physical examination in three years. Last year, she took a shower and found a lump in her breast. It was already the second stage of breast cancer. If she had done more than 100 breast ultrasounds every year, she would have been able to intervene at the nodule stage, and she would not have to suffer from subsequent chemotherapy.

In fact, there is really no need to limit the boundaries between the two. You can treat the physical examination as an annual health "mini-assessment". If you do well in the exam, don't be too lazy. You still have to abide by the healthy habits you should usually observe. If you do poorly in the exam, don't panic. Just adjust your daily health care actions according to the exposed loopholes. Combining the two is the most cost-effective way of health management.