A healthy lifestyle for frequent travellers
Advice written for people who spend a hundred nights a year in hotels, not for people with a stable weekday routine.
Read articleScreening has real value and real limits. A guide to which preventive interventions justify their cost and which mostly generate anxiety.
Interventions with strong evidence
Blood pressure measurement, lipid and ApoB testing, glucose and HbA1c, colorectal screening from the recommended age, cervical and breast screening within guideline intervals, and smoking cessation support. These are unspectacular and extremely effective.
Interventions worth discussing
Coronary calcium scoring in intermediate-risk adults, extended lipid subfractions, sleep apnoea screening in symptomatic patients and bone density testing where risk factors exist. Useful in the right person, unhelpful as a default.
Hospitality can change how care feels. It should never change what care is.
Interventions we advise against
Whole-body imaging in asymptomatic people without risk factors, unvalidated multi-cancer panels marketed directly to consumers, and broad micronutrient screens. These generate incidental findings at a rate that causes more investigation than benefit.
The uncomfortable truth
The most valuable preventive medicine is behavioural: resistance training, sleep regularity, alcohol reduction and blood pressure control. It is also the hardest to sell, because nobody can put it in a package.
Talk to a clinician
If this article raises a question about your own health, the Averdeno concierge desk can arrange a consultation with the physician best placed to answer it. Written by the Averdeno clinical team and reviewed before publication.
