Health Checkups & Medicines

The best way to monitor health and the idea of saving lots of money is to have a family type doctor. The doctor can be a family friend, an old classmate, a relative, or your trusted town doctor. An annual general physical and laboratory test is highly recommended. I learned this when I became an OFW in 2003. I regularly have an annual medical checkup abroad. I also do a general blood test every time I have a chance when I am back at home.

Knowing the levels of your cholesterol or glucose and the likes, gives us the power to balance our diet. We can be more convinced what food we should avoid and what are alternatives to craves. Achieving knowledge and control avoid the risk of getting sick and eventually reduce the cost of medical expense. In other matters, having a family doctor gives us a cost-effective medicine.

There are over the counter medicines for headaches, colds, and fever. What if your headaches are caused by clustered headaches and not by sinusitis? When we start overdosing the use of these meds, our liver and maybe other parts of the body suffers. Just make sure you eat something before taking the drugs.

Well, all of these are not enough of course, we need exercise etc. It can be a simple city walk, a run in the park, and sport activities with friends. In my hometown, a doctor’s checkup fee would be 7USD/300PHP, a general blood laboratory test is 14USD/600PHP, and chest x-ray is at 8USD/350-500PHP.

A clean environment is also a big factor; this is one reason that good urbanization has to come in. Redevelopment and or rejuvenations of old towns and cities are large steps in securing a cleaner and functional environment. If we start by analyzing just a household, what happens when pest like mice or cockroach start touching your plates, glass or spoons? Imagine the bacteria that will be transferred to your body system. How about mice that just eaten poisoned food from neighbors and had crawled to your cooking utensils? The cost of getting sick is increasing as one infects the other family members. The mood in the home changes as it tends for everyone to be quiet because someone is sick. Someone has to get up every 4 hours or 5 hours because medicines have to be given to the sick. There are physical sacrifices aside from emotional stress.

Of course and I agree that a family’s love will overcome everything but prevention is better than surprises.