What to pay attention to the night before a routine physical examination

The core principle of the night before a routine physical examination is not to deliberately change your daily routine and diet, and not to touch things that may easily interfere with the test results. It is enough to follow the general directions of a light diet, fasting for 8-12 hours, regular work and rest, and avoiding strenuous exercise.

To tell you a true story I encountered a while ago, a 28-year-old young man made an appointment for the company’s annual physical examination. He just happened to catch up with the department for a dinner the night before. He drank four bottles of beer, two skewers of grilled kidneys and half a portion of braised kidneys. The next day, he was found to have glycerin. The triesters were three times higher than the normal upper limit, and the alanine aminotransferase was twice as high. When he received the report, he was frightened and thought he had fatty liver plus liver damage. He went back for a follow-up examination after eating a light diet for a week. All indicators were normal, and he was anxious for several days.

The biggest concern for many people is whether they can drink water the night before. In fact, there is no one-size-fits-all standard for this. If you only do blood routine, chest X-ray, electrocardiogram and other items that do not require fasting, drinking one or two hundred milliliters of warm water before going to bed is absolutely fine. It’s okay to take a few sips if you are extremely thirsty, but if you do liver function, blood lipids, fasting blood sugar, liver, gallbladder, pancreas and spleen ultrasound, etc. For items, try not to drink sweet drinks, milk tea, coffee, etc., and don't drink more than 200 ml of water at one time, otherwise it may dilute the blood and affect the results. There was a little girl who was so thirsty before going to bed that she drank half a cup of iced milk tea. The next day, her fasting blood sugar test came out at 7.3, and she was almost diagnosed as pre-diabetic. After asking about her dietary history, she was asked to retest, and the result was completely normal.

In addition to food and drink, many people tend to ignore the impact of exercise and work schedule. There was a fitness enthusiast who practiced legs for two hours the night before and ran five kilometers. The creatine kinase test the next day was four times higher. The doctor almost asked him to do a check-up for myocarditis. Later, he learned that it was a physiological increase caused by exercise. Some people stayed up late to watch TV dramas until 2 or 3 o'clock, and the aminotransferase was slightly elevated the next day. These are actually avoidable errors.

Another controversial point is whether to stop commonly used drugs for chronic diseases. Currently, there are two opinions in clinical practice. Some doctors recommend stopping as much as possible to avoid affecting the results, while others believe that stopping the drugs rashly is more risky. The current mainstream recommendations are antihypertensive drugs, hypoglycemic drugs, and antiarrhythmic drugs. For some medicines that need to be taken for a long time, just take them normally. Drinking a sip of water and taking them will not affect the results at all. On the contrary, if you stop the antihypertensive medicines, your blood pressure will spike during the physical examination the next day, which may lead to accidents. If you are not sure whether you should stop taking the medicines, it is safest to call the physical examination center in advance and ask.

By the way, if there is a fecal routine in your physical examination, don’t eat pork liver, duck blood, red dragon fruit, etc. the night before. I met an aunt a while ago who ate duck blood and vermicelli soup the day before, and the fecal occult blood was positive the next day. She spent a long time doing a colonoscopy with no problems, and spent more than 1,000 for the examination. If a female friend has a gynecological examination or cervical cancer screening, don’t have sex the night before, and don’t rinse the vagina, otherwise the sampling results will be inaccurate.

In fact, there is no need to be too nervous. Don’t starve yourself for two or three days for a physical examination, or suddenly eat a vegetarian diet for a week. The result will not be your true physical condition and will be meaningless. Just don’t let yourself go too far.