Preventative Healthcare

Preventive health care is a better approach than waiting until you have symptoms. By then, you’ve missed your chance to stop the problem and protect your well-being. At Prosperity Internal Medicine in Reston, Virginia, Tarique Zahir, MD, and Taseen Mir, MD, strive to help every person stay healthy and prevent long-lasting health conditions, because once a chronic disease takes hold, it can’t be cured. If you haven’t had a preventive health care appointment in the last year, call Prosperity Internal Medicine or schedule an in-person or telehealth visit online today.

Why do I need preventive health care?

Preventive health care finds signs of disease at an early stage, while you have time to either fend off the problem or stop it from progressing to an advanced stage.

Chronic diseases like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and Type 2 diabetes develop gradually. As they progress, there’s a stage when your blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar are elevated, but not yet high enough to cause full-blown disease.

This in-between stage gives you the chance to prevent the disease. Here’s the problem: You don’t have symptoms at this stage. The only way to know you’re on the road to developing a chronic disease is with routine preventive check-ups.

How does a risk assessment support preventive health care?

A risk assessment reveals how likely you are to develop a chronic disease and highlights the things you can change to lower your risk.

Your provider looks for these and other risk factors:

• Family history of disease
• Personal history of disease
• Your overall physical health
• Your emotional and behavioral health (including daily stress)
• Lifestyle habits (diet, exercise, and sleep habits)
• Behaviors proven to affect your health (smoking, alcohol and drug use)
• Exposure to environmental toxins

Reviewing these factors at each check-up gives your provider a quick way to see if any risks have changed since your last physical.

How does preventive health care lower my chances for disease?

Your risk factors combined with the information your provider learns from a physical exam and running labs creates a complete profile of your chances of developing a chronic disease.

With that information, your provider works together with you to create a plan to prevent problems. Your plan may include:

Lifestyle modifications

When chronic diseases are detected before they become an established, full-blown condition, you can usually prevent the problem by changing your diet, getting regular exercise, reducing stress, stopping smoking, and reducing your alcohol intake.

For example, you can stop prediabetes from turning into Type 2 diabetes by eating foods that don’t raise your blood sugar, getting more exercise (which lowers blood sugar), and losing weight (if needed).

Medications

If lifestyle modifications don’t restore your health, or you’re nearly at the tipping point for full-blown disease, your provider prescribes medications.

If you want to live the healthiest possible life, it’s time to schedule preventive health care at Prosperity Internal Medicine. Call the office or use the online booking tool today.