Have you ever had the suspicion that you had a medical issue but didn’t want to bother with making a trip to the doctor in order to find out? You might’ve preferred to keep it more private, save a bit of money, or you might not have had the time to visit the doctor and have tests done.
Whatever your reasons are, more and more of us are taking the reins when it comes to our health. One way to do this is using at-home screening tests. You can find ones that check for everything from diabetes and high cholesterol, to cancer; there’s even an at home std test. But which types are worth your time and money?
Blood Glucose
People with diabetes need to monitor their blood sugar levels daily so they can adjust food intake or medication levels. However, knowing your A1C level, which tells you how your glucose levels are performing over time, is also a valuable piece of the treatment puzzle. While it used to be you had to have blood drawn in a lab after a doctor’s visit, you can now test for this at home with results in about five minutes.
Cholesterol
If you have high cholesterol or are just concerned you might, it only makes sense to check your levels of cholesterol once or twice a year to find out if the meds are helping. You can now do this from home. If your cholesterol levels are high, you might need to make a few changes to your lifestyle to lower those numbers.
Colon Cancer
Getting a colonoscopy can assist with the prevention of colorectal cancer because it allows your doctors to find and remove any cancerous growths. However, many people try to avoid screening for colon cancer. For those people and for anyone who wants to monitor their health, a fecal occult blood test might be a reasonable alternative. This is where you take a small sample from a bowel movement to find out if you’re experiencing any sort of bleeding from polyps. Samples are then sent to a lab for analysis. If the test comes back positive you should contact your doctor.
Urinary Tract Infections
This condition can be rather painful and sends millions of people each year to their doctor. If you have symptoms, home screening tests for UTIs can be accurate tools for diagnosis. If you have a history of this type of infection, your healthcare professional might be willing to prescribe the needed medications without an office visit. If not, you’ll have to go to urgent care or see your doctor to be diagnosed and get a prescription. If you do frequent UTIs, you may want to ask your healthcare provider about using a sample of your urine to determine why you might be getting them so often and which meds would be the most effective for treating them.
Sales of these types of home health screening tests are likely to increase in the coming years as more people want more control over their healthcare. Most of them require a stool or urine sample, a swab of your saliva, or a drop of blood. Some of them will give you a result in a matter of minutes while others might require you to send them to a lab to get the results. All of them provide convenience and confidentiality.
Many see this trend as not only inevitable but that it might just be the future of medicine.
