Preventative medicine, BBC1

Just watching BBC1, a guy with years of health issues turns out to have a vitamin B deficiency.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qbs4n

I take a mixture of vitamins oils every week.

The program helped people to get to the route of their problems. Why does it take a TV program to do that?I had some blood tests, cholesterol was I reach 50, have you all had these tests?

Do we need more preventative medicine, more spending on our GP system?

I would say that the best preventative medicine at the moment that would help millions would be this.. dont eat as much!

Its free, easy to administer and does not involve the GP.

My European friends travel back to pay privately in their home countries for regular blood screening tests for liver enzymes, vitamin levels, cholesterol etc. They get general advice about reducing drinking, or whatever.

There's something about our healthcare model which reduces incentives for preventative medicine. It's basically the way care is commissioned at the primary level (ie GPs). There are some well publicised initiatives which GPs get payments to meet targets on, whereas others they are not incentivised to meet. Indeed the incentive is for GPs to reduce referrals to secondary care. The costs for late diagnosis are not bourne by the GPs. It's paid by the hospitals in increased care costs or surgeries. But cautious negative referrals will cost the GP extra money. That's one of the reasons we have some of the worst cancer diagnosis rates in the developed world.

That being said, there is a cost benefit weighting that needs to be applied to tests which are to be provided at public expense. We really just need more large scale studies in preventative medicine to know which ones are effective and for what.

gp's cant be trusted nowadays, they let a lot of things slide and don't do regular blood tests on some patients like my dad so he nearly died from low sodium and again from low potassium.

most of your blood tests could go out of range and they say everything is ok, so always ask for a printout and check them yourselves.

You'll be invited for a free NHS Health Check every five years if you're between 40 and 74 years of age and do not already have heart disease, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease or high blood pressure.

I am 55, I think I have been tested twice.

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/nhs-health-check/pages/what-is-an-nhs-health-check-new.aspx