Have you been to an annual physical exam and realized you are not fasting? Well, you are not alone and more importantly, that’s not the end of the world! There are ways to work around it if you ask me.
Here are some tips to remember before your next annual exam:
- Exercise: Can exercise affect your bloodwork? Yes, certain parameters like your blood sugar, cholesterol and inflammatory markers may be affected by exercise. Ideally bloodwork is done in a resting state. Which means you may want to skip your morning walk when you go in for your bloodwork. For best results avoid high intensity exercise for about two days before your annual physical.
- Women and Sex: What in the world you may ask! For women, annual exams may include Pap smears (for cervical cancer screening). I wish we had a non-invasive pee test for it but we do not yet. So till then, for Pap smears, you may want to make sure to avoid sexual intercourse 48 hours prior to the exam. Also to remember that periods may affect obtaining an adequate tissue sample, besides making it difficult to read the sample under the microscope. So it may be best to time the exam for when your period bleeding has stopped for that cycle.
- Coffee/ Tea/ Smoking: Caffeine and smoke can affect your blood pressure and other vital signs, so grouping them together here. Hence it’s best recommended not to use those on the morning of the annual exam. We have to wait a full hour for the coffee’s effect in blood pressure to wear off. Besides, coffee and tea are diuretics which make you urinate more and can even leave you dehydrated at the time of the exam/ bloodwork.
- Skipping medications: Even if you need to be fasting for bloodwork, it is advisable to take all your medications as you normally would except insulin when you are fasting, and aspirin/ NSAIDs like ibuprofen etc. which need to be taken with food. Blood pressure is known to come back with a vengeance (dearly called ‘rebound hypertension’ in medical terms) when a dose is skipped or treatment abandoned altogether. Oftentimes an elevated blood pressure at the doctor’s office may be from missed blood pressure medicines.
- Dehydration: Fasting implies avoiding food and beverages for at least 6 hours, ideally 8 hours, but this does not include water!! Yes you can and should drink water before you head to your annual exam. Water intake or it’s lack thereof can affect anything from your blood pressure and heart rate, down to the blood glucose and cholesterol levels as well as kidney function on the bloodwork. So do yourself a favor and make sure to savor (wow that does rhyme lol) some precious H2O before your next annual exam.
Wishing you a calm and easy annual check up!
