What is the difference between preventive care and physical examination

To put it simply, physical examination is a staged "health minesweeper", the core is to find out health problems that already exist but have not yet shown symptoms; preventive health care is a long-term "health moat", the core is to keep out possible problems. This is the most essential difference between the two.

You can think of it as maintenance of your family car. The physical examination is a compulsory annual inspection every year. It checks the national standards one by one, including whether the lights are bright enough, whether the brakes are working, and whether the exhaust emissions pass the test. After the inspection, you will be given a report form, and any unqualified items will be clearly marked without any room for ambiguity; Preventive care is your daily car maintenance habit. If you know that you often drive on bumpy roads, you should regularly rust-proof the chassis. When driving, don’t brake suddenly and slam on the accelerator to extend the life of the brake pads. When parking in the summer, try to stay in the shade to reduce the chance of tire aging. There is no unified standard. It all depends on the actual use scenario of your car.

Last year I met a young man who worked on an algorithm. All the indicators of the unit's physical examination for three consecutive years were within the normal range, but he was tired every day, suffered from insomnia, and had shoulder and neck pain that made him unable to lift his arms. The physical examination report only said "sub-healthy, regular work and rest recommended." The doctor gave him a two-month adjustment plan, which included getting up every 40 minutes to do spinal stretching for 3 minutes, not using electronic devices for an hour before going to bed, and getting a lumbar support that adapted to the curvature of his spine. Within a month, most of his insomnia was cured, and his shoulder and neck pain symptoms were also relieved a lot. If these problems only rely on annual physical examinations, it is actually difficult to get targeted intervention at an early stage.

Of course, many people now feel that many high-end physical examination packages have added traditional Chinese medicine physical identification and lifestyle advice, and the boundaries between the two are becoming increasingly blurred. There are indeed many voices in the industry saying that in the future physical examinations will gradually be connected with preventive care to form a complete health service chain of "screening-intervention-follow-up". However, in terms of the current core positioning, there is a gap between the two. The differences are still very clear: the core goal of physical examination is to "not miss a diagnosis", and all projects are set up to find out abnormal indicators that have already occurred, and the evaluation standards are unified and objective; while the core goal of preventive care is to "improve quality", and personalized adjustments will be made based on each person's living habits, work environment and even family history. There is no one-size-fits-all answer.

A while ago, there was a mother who had just given birth. The physical examination showed that her bone density was low, but not yet to the extent that she needed drug intervention. The physical examination report only recommended "more calcium and more sun exposure." When she consulted a preventive health doctor, the doctor asked her that she was usually lactose intolerant and could not drink milk, and she rarely went out because she had to take care of her baby. The plan given to her was not to force her to drink milk, but to have her take a calcium tablet without vitamin D every day, walk downstairs for 20 minutes while the baby was suffering from jaundice around nine in the morning, and teach her a few light weight-bearing movements that she could do while raising the baby at home. She followed the plan for half a year and then went for a review, and her bone density returned to normal levels.

In fact, for ordinary people, there is no need to separate the two clearly. Get a physical examination on time every year to understand your current physical condition, and then adjust your daily habits based on preventive health care. It does not cost much, but it can help you avoid a lot of unnecessary sins.