GP mental health plan

GP mental health plan is service that entitle a patient access to psychologist due to mental health illness. As this is one of the most claim item, I would like to make everyone aware how this system works.

Health check

When a person reach age of 50, a doctor will normally ask to have a proper health check if he or she never had one done before. The recommended health check should include:

  • Blood pressure
  • Blood tests for fasting cholesterol, sugar, full blood count, electrolytes, kidney function, liver function tests
  • Iron studies, vitamin B12, thyroid function test, folic acid, PSA and Vitamin D level are subject to patient's condition. A doctor will need to ask question to justify these tests are necessary
  • Skin check especially Caucasians to look for skin cancer such as basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, melanoma and etc
  • *Faecal occult blood test to detect bowel cancer 

Vitamins a waste of money

A study done by experts in UK and US on Vitamins supplement states do not improve general health well being. Instead, it is a waste of money.

An Australian Doctor publish a news as below:

The first paper by researchers from Harvard University aimed to determine whether long-term multivitamin use could help prevent age-related cognitive impairment.

Chinese Medicine

Here, I would like to educate people about the safety of Chinese Medicine. I, myself a Malaysian Chinese do not recommend traditional chinese medicine due to its unproven effectiveness and safety. There have been numerous tests done in Singapore and discovered most of the Chinese traditional medicine contains toxics such as arsenic, lead and etc. 

Moreover, traditional chinese practitioner does not have training and knowledge about its ingredient of herbs being used. Some traditional chinese practitioner mixed different cocktail of herbs thinking that it will treat a disease but it actually can do more harm than good to the body. Most of the chinese medicine have not been researched thoroughly about its safety and efficiency. 

There is an article from Australian Prescriber discussing the details of quality and safety of traditional chinese medicine. Click here.