Cheryl Martin (Host): It's important to be proactive about your health, and preventive healthcare can be one of the most effective ways to lower your chances of having poor health. Here to explain simple ways you can take charge, is Dr. Linda Rickman. She's a Primary Care Internal Medicine Physician with the Trinity Health of New England Medical Group. This is Transforming Your Health, the podcast from Trinity Health of New England. I'm Cheryl Martin. Dr. Rickman, so glad to have you on to discuss this topic.

Linda Rickman, MD: Glad to be here.

Host: What are some ways we can educate ourselves to prevent disease and stay healthy long term?

Linda Rickman, MD: Well, there are a number of screening tests available to detect early problems before they become serious. What's right for you, depends on your age, whether you're male or female, and your family history. You should talk to your doctor to discuss your screening options. Get regular medical checkups to diagnose health concerns that could cause long term problems, but that initially cause no symptoms. These include such things as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, glaucoma, and some cancers.

Early treatment prevents long term consequences down the road. At your checkup, your doctor may recommend blood tests to screen for some problems and other tests to screen for breast cancer, colon cancer, and osteoporosis. Some smokers are good candidates for lung cancer screening. Other preventative care may include recommendations for vaccines and referrals to an eye doctor, gynecologist, dentist, and podiatrist.

Some diseases are hereditary and run in the family. Having a family history of certain conditions like diabetes, cancer, or heart disease, can increase your risk of developing them and can change recommendations on screening or frequency of screening.

Host: We often hear that we should talk to our primary care doctor about questions or family history concerns. Why is it so important to have open and honest conversations with your doctor?

Linda Rickman, MD: Your relationship with your doctor should be honest and trusting. You and your doctor are partners with the same goals, keeping you healthy. When talking with our patients, we're gathering information needed to create a wellness or treatment plan.

Host: So it sounds like then that it's really important to use your time wisely when you have a doctor's appointment. So what can we do to plan ahead for our primary care appointment?

Linda Rickman, MD: The best way for the doctor to take good care of you is to have as much information as possible. So if you write things down, then that's going to make things much more efficient, so then that optimizes the time that the doctor can spend explaining things to you and speaking with you. Write down a list of current and past medical history, prior surgeries, allergies, or side effects to medicine you may have had in the past. If you make a list of your current concerns and symptoms, including how long and how often you experience them, as well as any questions, that, that really helps make your time more efficient.

The doctor's going to want to know about your family history, such as what health problems your parents, brothers and sisters, children, and grandparents have had; because those family history issues are important to decide if you need extra screening. Bring pen and paper to take notes, or ask a friend or family member to come with you, because four ears are better than one if there's something more complicated that's going to be discussed.

Being organized and having things written down help so that the doctor can spend more time talking with you, and less time having to gather the information. If you have it typewritten, that's even better, so that nobody has to deal with bad handwriting.

Host: Here is a question regarding those regular checkups with the doctor and many times they will ask for blood tests. Is it proper for the patient to say, to request a particular blood test that the doctor is not suggesting?

Linda Rickman, MD: Well, the doctor is going to know what blood tests are right for you, depending on your particular medical history, age, sex, family history. But if there's something in particular that you're concerned about, then of course you should bring it up, because you want to have an open dialogue with the doctor.

Host: Okay. Are there any other tips for being proactive you'd like to add?

Linda Rickman, MD: The most important thing is really an open dialogue and bringing your concerns and as much medical information that you have to the appointment so that you can get the most out of it and your doctor will have the most information to be able to make the appropriate suggestions.

Host: Dr. Linda Rickman, thanks for briefing us on how to be proactive about our health and prevent disease. Thank you so much.

Linda Rickman, MD: Thank you.

Host: To schedule an appointment or learn more, call 833 CU NOW. That's 833, the letter C you, Y-O-U NOW, N-O-W, 833 CYOU NOW. Or you can visit trinityhealthofNE.org/primary/care. If you found this information helpful, please share it with others, especially on your social media.

This is the Transforming Your Health podcast. Thanks for listening.