Most health professionals recommend that you get regular blood tests done every year. This includes getting a complete blood count, a comprehensive metabolic panel, and any other tests that may be relevant for your age, sex, and current health status.
Unfortunately, many people in the United States aren't getting lab tests done as regularly as they need to. This can leave health conditions undiagnosed for months or even years, leaving diseases and infections to fester and worsen.
To prevent this from happening to you, you need to get a general health panel lab test every single year. To learn more about why, keep reading.
What Is One's General Health Status?
General health incorporates a lot of interwoven factors. There are many kinds of health:
- Physical
- Mental
- Social
- Spiritual
- Emotional
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as the state of complete well-being, which includes physical, mental, and social factors. The organization also states that health is not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
While this definition doesn't get into specific health markers, it tells us that anyone can be healthy, whether you have pre-existing conditions or not.
Risk Factors for Poor General Health Status
Many factors affect your health. It's more than what you eat or how much you exercise.
Here are some of the most common risk factors that experts associate with poor general health:
- Tobacco use
- Physical inactivity
- Excessive alcohol use
- Eating foods with low nutritional value often
- High blood pressure
- Hyperlipidemia
- Hyperglycemia
Although all of these physical health risk factors affect one's general health status, they are not the only things to consider.
Your mental health can suffer from chronic stress, lack of sleep, and exposure to traumatic events. Your spiritual health can suffer from social isolation, depression, and anxiety. Your emotional health can suffer from being too hard on yourself, having too high of expectations, and handling too many things at once.
As you can see, your general health status stems from your actions, thoughts, and individual situation. Even your financial status can affect your health as you may struggle to get the healthcare that you need.
How Are Lab Tests Used to Identify One's General Health Status?
Whether you think that you're healthy or not, you need to get regular blood tests to see what's going on inside of your body. It's great if you feel that your social, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being is intact. However, this doesn't mean that your physical health is.
The absence of obesity does not mean you're healthy either.
So, we highly recommend that you get general health panel lab tests. By checking for specific biomarkers in the body, we can look at your physical health and other kinds of health.
For example, we can test the amount of cortisol in your system to see how your emotional health is doing. We can look at your thyroid hormones to test your mental well-being.
We can test for cholesterol, fat, glucose, and more to check your physical health.
Lab tests are the best way to assess your health because they allow you and your healthcare provider to get a complete look at what's going on inside of your body.
How Is General Health Status Diagnosed?
The diagnosis of your health status comes from three things:
- A physical exam
- Lifestyle questionnaire
- Blood work
From these three things, your healthcare provider can make an accurate assessment regarding your overall health. If you're going to your yearly physicals, you should have all three of these done each time you go.
You may receive the lifestyle questionnaire while you're in the waiting room. It should include questions about pre-existing conditions, recent symptoms, and troubling lifestyle factors. Your physician will likely have you update your answers to these questions each time you visit.
If you aren't going to your yearly physicals, it's likely that you could be missing out on important details about the status of your health.
The Lab Tests to Screen, Diagnose, and Monitor General Health Status
To test how healthy you are, you need to get an array of tests done. Remember, your health status consists of many different kinds of health. Therefore, you need to test all of these different health categories to truly see how healthy you are.
If you miss out on some important tests, then you can only assess a part of your health status rather than getting a full overview of your health.
At Ulta Lab Tests, we have five choices for general health panels. They range from Basic for people who already have a good idea about their health status to comprehensive for people who want to know everything that they can about their health:
With these choices, you'll be able to assess many different health categories:
- Blood health
- Bones and joints
- Brain health
- Cardiovascular and heart health
- Diabetes
- Digestive health
- Fitness health
- Hormone health
- Kidney and liver health
- Mental health
- Thyroid health
We cover every area of health and well-being to ensure that you're getting the vital information you need to make better decisions about your life.
Get Your General Health Panel Lab Test With Ulta Lab Tests
If you want to put your general health to the test, you should get general health panel lab tests. Even if you aren't at your optimal health now, these tests for overall health can give you a starting point to better yourself.
Ulta Lab Tests offers tests that are highly accurate and reliable so you can make informed decisions about your health. Here are a few great things to love about Ulta Lab Tests:
- You'll get secure and confidential results
- You don't need health insurance
- You don't need a physician's referral
- You'll get affordable pricing
- We offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee
Order your general health panel lab tests today and your results will be provided to you securely and confidentially online in 24 to 48 hours for most tests.
Take control with Ulta Lab Tests today!
