Talk

Today is my birthday. Coming so quickly on the heels of the new year, birthdays have always been an opportunity to make (or reinforce) my goals and resolutions for the next year. I like to keep them short, sweet and meaningful.

Birthdays, no matter when they fall, are great triggers for doing something positive and proactive about your health. Here are important birthday milestones:

• If you’re 18, go register to vote. Seriously! As a voter, you have a voice in health care legislation. Become educated and make your voice heard by voting in your local, state and federal elections.
• If you’re 21 and a woman, get a pap smear with HPV screening if you haven’t already. It’s easiest to remember annual gynecological check-ups if you tie them to something like, oh, your birthday. (Depending on depending on your last pap results, current sexual status, and whether your last test included HPV, you may not need a pap every year. Check with your doc.)
• If you’re 40 and a woman, get a mammogram. It’s not the hassle you think it is, and it’s important to have baseline imaging from when you’re young (40 is young!) as a point of reference for later mammograms.
• If you’re 50 and a man, get prostate cancer screening. Yes, both the PSA and DRE.
• If you’re 50, get a colonoscopy. At the bare minimum, do some version of colorectal cancer screening.

So what are my resolutions this year? I’m not telling!

Technorati Tags: birthday celebration, health, cancer screening, disease prevention

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 6:02 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.