While a healthy diet and regular physical exercise are important, they aren’t the only things a person needs to do to practice a healthy lifestyle. Trover Health System reminds you to schedule preventative health screenings for the New Year so that you can get healthy and stay healthy in 2010. Annual health screenings are important to ensuring good health no matter what your age.

Below is a list of tests that men and women should have on a regular basis. Remember these are only recommendations and your personal situation may indicate that you should have these tests earlier and more often then these recommendations indicate.

• Pap tests — once a year for women over age of 21
• Mammograms — once a year for women over 40
• Obesity — once a year for men and women
• Cholesterol checks — once a year for men and women starting at age 45 or sooner if you smoke, have diabetes or if heart disease runs in your family
• Blood pressure — every two years for men and women
• Colorectal cancer tests — annually for men and women starting at age 50
• Diabetes tests — men and women should be tested every three years unless they have risk factors such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol
• Osteoporosis tests — women 65 and older should have a bone density test at least once. If you are between the ages of 60 and 64 and weigh 154 lbs. or less, talk to your provider about whether you should be tested
• Abdominal aortic aneurysm — men ages 65–75 who have ever smoked should be screened at least once
• Prostate cancer screening — yearly testing for men beginning at age 50 or age 45 for those at higher risk

Print out a screening checklist to take with you to your next appointment. Click here for men and click here for women.

To find a physician at Trover Health System, please visit http://www.troverhealth.org/services_&_specialties/.