3 ms·

I wish there were some kind of master list of things to look out for with regards to health. I know generally "if you suddenly feel consistently worse than befo

I wish there were some kind of master list of things to look out for with regards to health. I know generally "if you suddenly feel consistently worse than before, that's bad", but more specific advice - like what your doctor said about suddenly worsening stamina - would be nice. It feels like all too often we hear of people getting diagnosed with a few months to live out of the blue... perhaps it's just my inner hypochondriac, but I can't help but worry about my own health every time I read one of those headlines, and wonder if there were really no warning signs or if they were simply ignored out of innocent ignorance/negligence. A mild headache, a dull numbness, suddenly getting winded, how often are serious warning signs ignored until it's too late because of their deceptive mildness making people think "it'll probably go away"? Anyways, congratulations to you on catching something before it happened!

derbOac 5y ago
I've been involved with endurance athletics the last few years. Triathlons but also the things that go into it separately (running, swimming, biking, etc.) There's kind of a genre of posts that show up on triathlon forums that roughly fall into the category of "I'm a dedicated triathlete who does X impressive triathlons every year with good times and I just had a heart attack." Sometimes there's a variant of this along the lines of the OP: "I suddenly started feeling winded and didn't feel right so I got checked and they rolled me into the OR immediately." Inevitably everyone on the forum is terrified, wondering how such a thing could happen that someone could be at the pinnacle of aerobic health, and then suddenly collapse with a serious cardiovascular problem. Then everyone realizes this is a recurring theme, there's a discussion of whether triathletes are at greater or lesser risk for cardiovascular problems, and people usually end up with some rough consensus that exercise is actually good. Then finally everyone starts talking about how to identify problems before they get too bad. The conclusion is usually that it's impossible to just tell without preventative screening. That is, the best thing to do is to go get checkups. Get stress tests etc. proactively. Get physicals and so forth and so on. Not that you should be a hypochondriac, but you need medical testing and screening, not monitoring of symptoms. I'm probably as guilty of not doing regular screenings as anyone, but maybe that should change.
- agent008t 5y ago
  But then, aren't symptomless screenings also discouraged? Because many screenings have risks of false positives, and you end up having to do more (possibly dangerous/invasive) screenings as well as stress out about it needlessly? In particular, this is often brought up when preventative cancer screening is discussed.

derbOac 5y ago

I've been involved with endurance athletics the last few years. Triathlons but also the things that go into it separately (running, swimming, biking, etc.) There's kind of a genre of posts that show up on triathlon forums that roughly fall into the category of "I'm a dedicated triathlete who does X impressive triathlons every year with good times and I just had a heart attack." Sometimes there's a variant of this along the lines of the OP: "I suddenly started feeling winded and didn't feel right so I got checked and they rolled me into the OR immediately." Inevitably everyone on the forum is terrified, wondering how such a thing could happen that someone could be at the pinnacle of aerobic health, and then suddenly collapse with a serious cardiovascular problem. Then everyone realizes this is a recurring theme, there's a discussion of whether triathletes are at greater or lesser risk for cardiovascular problems, and people usually end up with some rough consensus that exercise is actually good. Then finally everyone starts talking about how to identify problems before they get too bad. The conclusion is usually that it's impossible to just tell without preventative screening. That is, the best thing to do is to go get checkups. Get stress tests etc. proactively. Get physicals and so forth and so on. Not that you should be a hypochondriac, but you need medical testing and screening, not monitoring of symptoms. I'm probably as guilty of not doing regular screenings as anyone, but maybe that should change.

agent008t 5y ago
But then, aren't symptomless screenings also discouraged? Because many screenings have risks of false positives, and you end up having to do more (possibly dangerous/invasive) screenings as well as stress out about it needlessly? In particular, this is often brought up when preventative cancer screening is discussed.