The annual physical is dying an agonizing death because the medical profession refuses to believe the facts that a good annual physical has no effect on mortality. When it comes to disease-specific mortality – how soon you die from a disease – it also has no effect. When it comes to dying from cancer or heart disease, the annual physical has no effect.
The annual physical did have an effect on the number of new diagnoses of high blood pressure, high blood fats, high cholesterol and high blood sugar (diabetes). The physical also resulted in increased screenings, hospitalizations, disability, worry, referrals to specialists and additional visits to the general practitioners—All to no avail.
Amazingly, despite knowing this information for decades, the annual physical continues to be a cherished belief and what medicine calls a first line of defense against disease and dying. However, the facts—first reported in the Health alert in 1995 and again in 2005, and now being published by medicine—prove this false.
Still want an annual physical? No problem, as long as you know that an annual physical, according to medical experts, will increase your risk for over diagnosis and overtreatment, with invasive and unnecessary biopsies, surgeries and other treatments. Perhaps more important, you should know that if you want to get healthier and live longer, you would do better by switching your diet away from the medical low-fat or standard American diet. And if added in a brisk daily walk and some appropriate supplements made from raw, whole foods and extracts, you would surpass any benefits of the annual medical physical 10-fold or more.
