What should you pay attention to the day before a routine physical examination?

I have been in the physical examination center for almost five years. To be honest, the most important thing to note the day before a routine physical examination is "don't deliberately change your daily living habits." Just keep how you eat and move as usual. Deliberate dieting, heavy supplementation, and random discontinuation of medicine will distort the physical examination results and completely fail to reflect your true physical condition.

Last week, I met a 62-year-old Aunt Zhang. She heard from neighbors in the community that she should eat a vegetarian diet before taking a blood lipid test. She only ate steamed buns and drank white porridge three days in advance, not even a vegetable leaf. The result was that her blood potassium was only 3.2mmol/L. The doctor with the report repeatedly asked her if she had vomiting and diarrhea recently and whether she had any pain in the kidney area. She broke out in a cold sweat. She went home and ate bananas and green leafy vegetables for three days and had a follow-up test. All the indicators were back to the normal range, which was a waste of worry for several days.

Of course, it does not mean that there are no taboos. Some things that will definitely interfere with the test results should be avoided as much as possible. For example, don’t drink with friends until midnight the night before. Last month, a young man who just graduated drank four bottles of cold beer in the team building. The next day, the liver function test for alanine aminotransferase exceeded twice. He asked with a sad face if he had hepatitis B. I asked him not to drink alcohol for a week and not to stay up late before rechecking. All indicators returned to the normal range. Also, if you eat a lot of iron-rich foods such as duck blood and pork liver the day before, the fecal occult blood test will easily show a false positive, and you will have to make an appointment for a colonoscopy review at that time, which is a waste of time.

The most frequently asked question now is "Should we stop taking regular medicines?" There are currently two different views in the industry: one is based on the accuracy of the test, which believes that it is best to stop taking non-essential medicines for 2-3 days before testing to avoid drug components interfering with the test results.； Another view that is more clinical is that antihypertensive drugs, antihyperglycemic drugs, and antiarrhythmic drugs that are needed to control chronic diseases must not be stopped. After all, if you stop antihypertensive drugs for a physical examination, and your blood pressure soars to 180 the next day, not only will the results be inaccurate, but it may also induce a cerebrovascular accident, which is not worth the loss. If you are really worried that the medicine will affect the results, you can ask the doctor who prescribes the physical examination in advance and adjust it based on the specific items you want to check. Don't stop blindly on your own.

Also, don’t rush to the gym to pump iron and run a half-marathon the day before. There was a senior fitness enthusiast who practiced legs for more than two hours. The next day, the creatine kinase was three times higher than the normal value. He was almost stayed by the doctor to check for rhabdomyolysis. After asking about the situation, he found out that it was caused by excessive exercise. Don’t eat late-night snacks such as barbecued crayfish after 8 pm. If you are really thirsty, it’s okay to take a sip of warm water. Don’t drink half a liter of milk tea, juice, or tons of milk tea, or half a liter of blood sugar and blood lipids will be the next day. Oh, by the way, if a girl catches up with her period, it is best to tell the nurse who takes the sample in advance. Routine urine samples are easily contaminated by menstrual blood. When the urine occult blood is detected, it will take a long time to panic.

In fact, there are really not that many complicated rules and regulations. Don’t take the physical examination too seriously and deliberately adjust it, and don’t ignore it at all. If it can reflect your true daily state, then the physical examination is not in vain.