Lifestyle diseases: Potential benefits of early screening

Your doctor will check on your blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol levels, glucose level among others to help you take charge of your health and maintain a healthy lifestyle. FILE PHOTO | SHUTTERSTOCK

Good health is important as it improves the quality of life and enhances productivity. By having an active physical life and proper diet, you play a role in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

At the end of the day, prevention of disease is always better and less expensive than cure.

Having regular checkups to screen for diseases like diabetes and hypertension where there is evidence of benefit in intervening early is an integral part of ensuring your general well-being.

Some of these diseases have no symptoms early on and by the time one starts feeling sick, it may be too late to reverse or may require more intense treatment to slow further progression.

For example, increased amounts of some types of cholesterol in blood can result in increased accumulation of fat in blood vessels making them narrow and subsequently reducing blood supply to important organs like the heart.

This could lead to damage of important organs including putting one at risk of a heart attack. 

People suffering from a heart attack can present in many ways including chest pain that may or may not get worse.

Having high cholesterol levels is a known risk factor for heart complications. If this is identified early through the routine measuring of cholesterol levels in the blood, the risk of such complications can be reduced dramatically through strategies like reducing the intake of fried food, reducing carbohydrate intake and use of fat-lowering drugs where appropriate.

The number of people being diagnosed with diabetes has steadily increased globally with Africa contributing significantly to this as a result of urbanisation which is associated with the intake of unhealthy food such as fried food and reduced physical activity due to increased use of vehicles as opposed to walking. 

Diabetes can be identified easily by measuring glucose in the blood after an overnight fast (usually 8 – 14 hours) or measurement of a specialised test that we call glycated haemoglobin.

These are tests that can be performed as part of annual checkups and are useful in identifying people with diabetes or conditions that put one at high risk of developing diabetes.

This provides an early opportunity to start appropriate treatment early to control diabetes and delay the development of complications which can damage organs such as the heart, kidneys and eyes.

The number of cases of kidney disease has also increased considerably in Kenya mainly as a complication of lifestyle diseases in particular diabetes and high blood pressure.

Assessment of whether your kidney is performing as it should can easily be done by measuring a substance called creatinine in the blood which increases if your kidneys are not working well.

We can also check if there is protein in your urine which ideally shouldn’t be present if your kidneys are fine.

Early detection and treatment of kidney disease helps in slowing down further deterioration of these vital organs and in some instances, the damage can be reversed.

During regular health checkups, your doctor will check on your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and glucose level among other important tests to help you on maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Screening tests detect early signs of long-term health problems so that steps can be taken to reduce the risk of them developing. These conditions have no symptoms in early disease so you could be having it without knowing.

Your doctor will check on your blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol levels, glucose level among others to help you take charge of your health and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

We, therefore, urge you to consider having an annual visit to your favourite doctor to have your health status evaluated.

Dr Omuse is a Consultant Pathologist at Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi.