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Comment by smm2000 | Hacker News Reader

smm2000

What do you mean by comprehensive health check? What tests should I do? I do yearly physicals, but I feel they are mostly "feel good" exercises.

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They are feel good exercises, until they aren't ... Don't think of all OK result as money wasted, its insurance to catch any chronic illness in time.

I would consider tests comprehensive if tests all major internal organs (kidney, liver, heart, spleen + common cancers depending on gender/age), you can come up with one after talking to a physician. Because I am based in India, I can only recommend India specific one, https://www.apollohospitals.com/preventive-health-care-check... are generally good.

Thanks for the pointer. How much does a comprehensive test cost in India and are the test records given to the patient? I've wondered whether traditional Ayurveda and modern medicine are complementary.

It costs about $200 and the test results are given to the people. Modern medicine is pretty reasonably priced in India.

Do they draw blood and ask for a urine sample? Do they make you strip down and examine you from head to toe? Do they make you "turn and cough"? Do they listen to your heart and lungs? Do they look in your mouth? Do they look in your eye? Do they ask you about your health history?

If some or all of these are "no", it's not a comprehensive exam.

Some of these aren't even up to date. Lets stop acting like we're health experts here. If your doctor is still making you do "turn and cough", then your doctor is using out of date practices (source: my GF is a doctor). Similar to another person's post above, she cringes at posts like this. You SHOULD go to the doctor to get check up each year, but you should not just go get every test under the sun just in case. There's a reason when you go in for your yearly check up, the doctor does what they do. Perhaps it's more important in this discussion to say that there's a reason your doctor doesn't do every test under the sun on these checkups.

Could we also stop acting like our girlfriend being a doctor makes us qualified to give medical advice? What evidence in particular, aside from your girlfriend, do you have for the claim that the groin exam for inguinal hernias is outdated? Is this subject in your girlfriend's field? What publications does she cite?

Here's what she pointed me to:

http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Topic/reco...

Is that a joke? "Turn your head and cough" isn't a testicular cancer screening. It's to search for signs of inguinal hernias.

You don't really have a doctor girlfriend, do you? :)

You are correct, I believe they also feel for any lumps or irregular growth of the testes.

>What do you mean by comprehensive health check? What tests should I do?

Start by NOT asking random people on the internet.

Ask your doctor about what tests to do and he'll tell you based on your age / history, and you can trust him better than a random stranger or some web post.

Hacker news is a community of (from what I've seen) strong critical thinkers, with a poster in a thread often having a specific background in the field being discussed. Doctors aren't mythical beings, and discourse here about what medical tests are 'worth it' seems both appropriate and really interesting.

Oh come on... outside of a few notable individuals, nobody really knows who anybody here is, or what their credentials are to talk about anything.

Law and Medicine are two of the things most likely to precipitate a lot of online commentary by people who don't have the first clue of what they're talking about.

Technology being a third thing

>Hacker news is a community of (from what I've seen) strong critical thinkers

If I met a community of strong critical thinkers about Chemistry or Civic Engineering I wouldn't ask them advice for my software stack.

Besides, with the exception of a 20% or less who knows what they're talking about (and those only for narrow Computer Science or Engineering fields each), the others might as well be on Reddit. You can find tons of uninformed opinion about anything here. Plus a huge tendency to go with the latest fads (Rails, then JS, then Go, then Rust, etc).

>Doctors aren't mythical beings

No, just trained professionals.

Usually it's a physical combined with a comprehensive blood test. They look for elevated enzymes that could be indicative of various issues.

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