ANNUAL PREVENTATIVE EXAMS

Annual preventative exams are important because they can find health problems early, improving your chances of treatment and cure. Your annual preventive exam is an important opportunity to identify underlying conditions that may lead to fatigue, poor functioning and disease, if not corrected. It is not uncommon to identify several such conditions, such as low thyroid, iron deficiency, sleep apnea and Vitamin D deficiency, during one annual exam. 

This year, you can experience these benefits:

• A $4 blood test that detects whether you might have liver fibrosis which can lead to liver cancer or the need for liver transplant.
• The new pneumonia vaccine protecting you from 84% of the invasive pneumonia strains that can cause stroke.
• The Galleri early cancer detection blood test that can detect over 50 cancers growing in your body right now, with 0.5% false positives, a 73% positive predictive value of finding cancer within 12 months, and which identifies the type of cancer 90% of the time. 40% less cancer death is expected, using this test. We were the first office in the world to offer this well-proven test in 2021.
• Colon cancer screening with colonoscopy is now recommended starting at age 45. Don’t be the 19th of my patients to have colon cancer because you failed to start colonoscopy on time.
• Which cheeses are associated with a 57% less chance of heart attack.
• Testing for prostate cancer using the PSA velocity which was 100% specific in identifying prostate cancer versus normal control patients in one study.
• Shingles vaccine starting at age 50, which reduces the chance of dementia by 40% and reduces the risk of shingles-related chronic pain risk by 75%.
• Testing for vitamin D because those who take a vitamin D supplement had a 40% lower chance of dementia in one study and those who had a normal vitamin D level of 50 ng/mL had a 25 times less chance of being transferred to the ICU if they were hospitalized with COVID than those with a deficiency level of 20 ng/mL vitamin D.
• In those of appropriate age we include a blood test for evidence of artery inflammation that can indicate a higher risk of heart attack in the next five years.

Whooping cough disease causes a cough that results in vomiting or fainting, lasting three months. Antibiotics are not effective after the first two weeks, when it is often hard to tell that whooping cough is developing. A new wave of whooping cough is occurring in California in 2025, so a booster is recommended.

In keeping with our focus on discovering and treating underlying causes for symptoms, we screen for low thyroid and iron in women under 55, and low B12 in all patients. Low B12 is associated with memory loss, peripheral neuropathy and anemia. These are in addition to a complete blood count and a complete metabolic panel.