If you live in the UK you are lucky to have the NHS which will give you free health services. In addition to providing treatment when you have health problems the NHS also provides free services to prevent future disease. In the same way that vaccination can prevent serious disease later on, the NHS provides health checks for healthy people to prevent long-term serious conditions. If you are an adult aged 40 to 74 you are entitled to receive a free health check (unless you are already receiving treatment for long-term conditions). During this health check, the nurse is taking some information about your lifestyle, your blood pressure, height, weight, and a tiny drop of blood from your finger (or from your arm if it is done in a hospital) to check your cholesterol level and your sugar level.
Taking this health check can help you to find what your main risks are to get long-term conditions such as heart problems, diabetes, hypertension, etc. More importantly, it will guide you on what you can do to prevent these conditions. In most of the cases just improving your lifestyle can prevent these conditions (or postpone them for many years). In some cases your GP can prescribe some medication to prevent these conditions.
We are not providing health checks to patients directly at this stage, but only to authorised organisation and clinicians. If you would like to have a health check we recommend that you contact your GP.