In the majority of cases that is fine. But things can be found in a physical that can be corrected in a timely manner. If your blood sugar or cholesterol are getting too high, you won't feel the symptoms for a while. When you do, there may be irreversible damage.
My work pays us $100 to get a blood screening every year and they don't get to see the results. They just feel like if we see the results it may benefit them.
I used to preach so-called “early detection” but I’ve seen more damage to people knowing than if they had just not gone to the doctor.
I had a friend who got a doctor’s check-up, and they said they needed to cut out 2/3 of this stomach because it had the precursor to cancer, something called metaplasia. Mind you he had no symptoms. He looked just fine, and as far as I know he felt fine.
I pleaded with him not to do it. He was over 70 years old and he was already naturally too skinny. So I had a bad feeling about this operation.
He went ahead with it anyway the next week.
He was cancer-free if you want to call it that since from my point of view he did not have cancer in the first place. There was nothing wrong with him.
Well he died in a matter of months after the procedure, from extreme, uncontrollable weight loss, resulting in pneumonia.
And I’ve been blaming myself ever since because I felt like maybe, somehow I could have stopped him from getting that damn operation. I felt something bad was going to happen afterwards and that’s what happened. I saw what was happening in front of me and I failed to stop it.
So it seems to me that getting checked out in many cases may only tell you that you are going to die. That’s it. And there’s nothing that can be done about it, and the things that can be done will just make you worse and make you die a lot quicker and sooner.
So I understand when people say to me, “Why would I want to know that?” This was when I used to preach getting physicals every year and early detection.