June 12 – 18 is recognized as Men’s Health Week.

The men in our lives sometimes get so busy providing for all of us that they neglect their own health because they “feel good” and are not hurt. However, there are free preventive wellness exams each calendar year with your health insurance plans.

In these wellness exams, any and all screenings appropriate for age and gender can be performed and paid for at 100%. What one accomplishes by taking advantage of this is helping yourself. You are actually getting paid to help yourself.

Helping ourselves is a huge roll and responsibility in our entire medical profile. Please go drop this valuable information in your medical file so that if you get sick or you get hurt going forward, your medical professionals can see what is your “normal”.

The other advantage that you have is being able to set some personal goals for yourself. As an example, if you want to work on weight, blood pressure, glucose readings (diabetes), etc., you can learn what the normal range is, where you’re at with it and take preventive steps to pull yourself back in line.

We do routine maintenance on our homes and our cars, but sometimes we don’t put ourselves on the to-do list. I am providing a couple links for your convenience that you might find of interest.

• https://www.ghc.org/healthAndWellness/?item=/common/healthAndWellness/tests/recommendedTests/adultTests.html
• http://www.menshealthnetwork.org/healthfacts
• https://www.wellmark.com/insurance-explained/coverage-and-benefits