NHS DIY health check kits

[DippyDame]

dailymail.co.uk/health/arti...

This just flagged up!!!

[Star13]

sigh 🤦‍♀️

[Sparklingsunshine]

Blimey what next? DIY cervical smears and prostrate checks! As I understand it the take up rate of the current over 40's in person health checks is already pitifully low so will having to do all the leg work yourself improve things.

I'm not convinced. And will people be honest self reporting about their weight, BP etc. I wont be bothering. The list of things the NHS no longer seems concerned with gets bigger every day.

[Lalatoot in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

We will be slapping our boobs between 2 baking trays while take a selfie next!!!

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to Lalatoot]

Or using the photocopier to take an image of our lungs to send in🤦‍♀️

[Alanna012 in reply to Lalatoot]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Star13 in reply to Lalatoot]

I’m wetting myself laughing! You’ve made my day with that comment - my imaginations gone wild🤪😂🤣🤣

[DippyDame in reply to Lalatoot]

Brilliant!!

[PRJ20 in reply to Lalatoot]

😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣👌

[jade_s in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

LOL I actually just got a DIY smear kit as part of a reasearch project (i'm in belgium). 🙈 I'm actually ok with that. What this articles describes is just 💩

[Jaydee1507 Administrator]

Cardiovascular disease is the second biggest killer in England, affecting around 6.4million people. And a record five million Brits are living with diabetes, which raise the risk of stroke, heart attacks and heart failure.

It comes as an Australian study showed vitamin D supplements could reduce the risk of a heart attack by a fifth in over-60s.

Participants who took supplements had 19 per cent fewer heart attacks and cut their odds of needing heart bypass surgery by 11 per cent.

Thats incredible. I had no idea low vit D levels were linked to heart attacks.

All of this has already started though. Not long pre pandemic I was invited for a colonoscopy on a routine health check up basis to check for signs of bowel cancer. I couldn't do it then as I had not long had an operation. Then the pandemic struck and of course routine things all went to the wall. Eventually as the pandemic was beginning to die down I was sent a package with a stool testing kit to send back in the post. They had ceased doing colonoscopies for screening and brought in the postal stool kit.

You know I don't think this is as bad as it might look. Obviously there are things like mammograms that at the moment are the best way to screen for breast cancer, but in the future who knows what blood or other tests might come along.

The NHS is so pressed at the moment, if they can pick up those at risk of various conditions and treat them early in a cheaper way than before then its all good by me.

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to Jaydee1507]

I think my concern is that as bowel screening via post has shown, many people are too squeamish, dont see the need or are too embarassed to get a poo sample. Cervical smear uptake rates have been dropping in recent years. Probably for similar reasons, we nationally screen fewer people in the UK than in other EU countries. There is more reluctance to come forward.

Its all too easy to put off things we dont like doing and home kits can be shoved in a drawer and forgotten about. Plus can we trust that if a result is abnormal that GP's will act on it?

Its a bit like this week's announcement that all smokers and former smokers over 55 are going to be offered NHS lung screening. Sounds great in theory but where are the extra radiographers and clinicians coming from?

[Jaydee1507 Administrator in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

Actually my first test kit did go in a drawer and then they sent me a reminder and a new kit. I'm sure that will happen a lot for various reasons but there will be people who also waste colonoscopy appointments which would be far more expensive. There's probably many women who don't bother with their mamograms or smear tests, you're just never going to get all the people to do what they need to do.

As far as results go I have always had a letter following a smear or mammogram and I do believe GPs are pretty good if theres a need for follow up.

[humanbean in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

As a former smoker I would be interested in this. Where did you hear about it?

[humanbean in reply to Sparklingsunshine]

Oh, I just found it. My area isn't covered.

[mrskiki]

I recently completed a medication review online, used to have to talk to someone, just ticked the boxes about meds and supplements, including my ( over) weight, blood pressure which was Ok, said I still had all my symptoms, got my prescription and heard nothing more.

[humanbean]

From the Daily Mail article :

Patients will be invited to complete a health assessment on their phone or laptop, providing answers to questions about their weight, height, diet, alcohol intake and exercise.

I would love to know what they will do with the data. Are we all up for sale? Or have we been sold already and the buyers just need to fill in the blanks?

[Star13 in reply to humanbean]

I worry who the data is going to. It’s obviously going to be disseminated by some AI computer system that will pick up the negative results to spew out follow up letters/appointments. Then what? Who will have access to it? That will put me off for a start.

[Lavender-Blue]

The work of Malcolm Kendrick and others' is really interesting regarding Cholestrol and heart disease; if anyone is interested, please watch ; The Great Cholestrol Con (see link below)....At around 26 minutes of the video, there is a chart that shows that when we block cholestrol with Statins, the rest of the other essentials in our bodies are hindered at a mitrochondrial level.

On Dr Peter Longsjoen's webiste, (he is one of the Dr's on the video) he has done lots of research (although I haven't read them!) on Ubiquinol and it's role in the body and heart.

youtube.com/watch?v=iZctVYx...(Not working as expected?)

[LindaC]

Hmmm Thanks for posting! Whatever next...