A lot of people neglect their health due to financial reasons or a fear of doctors. Others do not have trust in the country’s health care system. However, seeing a local doctor should be a health priority. For instance,iIf you leave near Kuna, Idaho, visiting a Kuna doctor or one nearby as often as needed is important for your health and well-being. Of course, you visit a doctor whenever you feel sick, but you should also consider some visits for health evaluations, consultations, and annual physical examinations. Such visits are an important way to protect your health. Several benign health issues can become serious problems without proper oversight.
Reasons People Do Not Visit a Doctor
Several individuals only visit a doctor whenever they are sick. But preventive care appointments with a doctor are just as crucial. You may feel healthy, but there is a chance that there might be a medical condition a medical scan, laboratory work, and a physical examination can identify. Surveys show that some people do not see a doctor because of fear of embarrassment or they do not want to know they need lifestyle changes. Other reasons include increasing insurance premiums and co-insurance or co-pay costs.
In other cases, people can have iatrophobia or a fear of doctors. This fear develops after a person learns about bad news. Sufferers avoid doctors altogether to cope with this anxiety. Eventually, this becomes cyclical and a sufferer must visit a doctor once their condition becomes urgent enough.
No matter your reasons for not seeing a doctor, there are screenings you may miss out on. These include blood pressure screening, skin cancer screening, colorectal examination, diabetes test, cholesterol level test, breast cancer screening, cervical cancer screening, glaucoma test, and heart scan.
What Happens if You Delay Health Care?
All medical disorders begin somewhere, and your prognosis is better the earlier you let a doctor identify it. However, a lot of health issues are neglected for several months or years. By then, an easy-to-treat condition may have become a challenge to address when left untreated. The following are health problems that may develop or exacerbate if you do not see your doctor regularly:
- Since this condition may sometimes not present obvious symptoms, it can go undetected without regular medical checkups. When not treated, diabetes can result in chronic high blood glucose levels, which contributes to eye issues, heart disease, and stroke. Such issues result from damage to blood vessels. Also, untreated diabetes results in kidney damage, which may require kidney removal or dialysis.
- High blood pressure. During wellness visits, your blood pressure is one of the things that will be measured. But when you neglect your health, you put yourself at risk of now knowing you have hypertension. When left untreated, high blood pressure puts more stress on your blood vessels, increasing your risk of aneurysm, heart attack, or stroke.
- Gastrointestinal disorders. Inflammatory bowel disease and other gastrointestinal disorders can go undetected. You may think you experience diarrhea or abdominal pain due to the food you eat. However, not addressing such issues can lead to irreversible bowel damage. In fact, this puts you at risk of bowel obstruction, the development of abscesses and fistulas, as well as cancer.
