The Preventive Care Profile provides you with specific prevention recommendations based on your age, gender and health risks. It's no secret that prevention is generally more effective than treatment, as it is more likely to be a complete success and avoids much of the discomfort associated with the disease and its treatment. Our Preventive Care Profile covers all the main areas of preventive care: vaccines, screening tests, chemoprevention and lifestyle counseling.

Vaccines provide protection against several infectious diseases by causing the immune system to produce antibodies against these diseases. Antibodies are proteins that can specifically kill viruses and other microbes. Many diseases that once caused large numbers of children and adults to become ill are now rare or virtually extinct because of vaccines. Yes, vaccines occasionally have side effects, but overall their benefits to individuals and the population far exceed their small risks.

Screening tests are what most people think of as preventive care, but they don't really prevent disease, they just pick it up early. Screening tests are designed to detect disease before there are any symptoms, when the condition is hopefully more treatable than it would be if detected later, after symptoms had developed. It's vitally important to remember two things about screening tests: 1) not every disease can be effectively screened for; and 2) the benefits of screening are often rather modest. Other preventive care approaches can be more effective.

Chemoprevention is the use of drugs, hormones or other biologically active substances to prevent the development of disease. Examples include the use of aspirin to reduce the risk of heart disease or stroke, or taking the medication amantadine to avoid contracting influenza during an outbreak. Chemoprevention can be quite effective when used in the right circumstance.

Lifestyle counseling can actually be the most effective preventive care intervention, provided, or course, that one makes the recommended lifestyle changes. When a healthcare professional counsels a patient (or we make specific lifestyle recommendations), the idea is to change everyday behavior. Examples include smoking cessation, increasing exercise, or decreasing saturated fat intake in the diet. Lifestyle changes can, over time, have a major impact on health. Their benefits can overwhelm those of screening tests, for example, with little or no side effects and low cost. This is why we put so much emphasis on behavior: there is just no substitute for a healthy lifestyle. Of course, a healthy lifestyle by itself does not guarantee you will be healthy, but it certainly increases your odds

Our preventive care recommendations are based primarily, but not exclusively, on those of the US Preventive Services Task Force, a government-funded committee of experts that bases their guidelines purely on scientific evidence. As the Task Force is currently in the midst of updating their guidelines for the third time, we will be reviewing our recommendations frequently over the next year to provide you with the latest thinking on prevention.

Remember, preventive care is always preferable to treatment of a disease once it has developed. This is because the most effective defense against any disease is to avoid getting it in the first place. Among the four types of preventive care, a healthy lifestyle is the safest, and often the most effective, approach to prevention. There is just no substitute for doing the right thing.