How Biometric Screenings Help You Detect Symptomless Health Problems

Health problems vary in how they manifest from person to person. And often, that means they show practically no symptoms (and even none) at all.

Some even show no symptoms because that’s simply how they work.

So, your employees can silently be walking right into a heart attack without even knowing it.

Caring for your employees’ health drives morale and productivity up. And it also helps you keep your health insurance costs down.

Biometric screenings can check your employees’ blood and help you find three common, but serious, health conditions.

Here’s more on each:

1. Diabetes

This is when you have too much sugar in your blood. When that happens, your body can’t move insulin around your body like it should.

And that can lead to serious health problems like:

  • Heart attack
  • Stroke
  • Kidney problems
  • Vision problems
  • Numbness in your extremities

Around 25% of people with diabetes walk around with it and don’t even know it. You can get it at any age. However, adults over 45 are at the highest risk.

Your risk increases substantially if you live a sedentary lifestyle, are overweight, and have a family history of diabetes.

You can live with diabetes. However, once you have it, you’ve got it for the rest of your life (unlike the other health problems discussed later).

So, why not save the day and protect your employees from this serious and painful disease?

2. High Cholesterol

With the availability of fast food, it’s easy to get high cholesterol. Cholesterol is kind of like fat, and it slowly builds up in your arteries over time if not kept in check.

High cholesterol can cause:

  • Heart attacks
  • Diabetes
  • High blood pressure (another risk factor for heart disease)

Fortunately, biometric screenings can easily detect high cholesterol. And you can treat it with diet and exercise. You may possibly need medication to help too.

High cholesterol itself has no symptoms. So, the only way your employees learn about it is via biometric screenings.

3. High Blood Pressure

This condition affects around ⅓ of all American adults. Truthfully, no one knows all the exact causes of high blood pressure.

However, known ones include an unhealthy diet, smoking, lack of exercise, high stress, genetics, and older age.

High blood pressure can cause:

  • Aneurysms (enlarged arteries that can burst)
  • Heart attack
  • Stroke
  • Dementia
  • Mild cognitive impairment (according to Mayo Clinic)
  • Nerve damage
  • Kidney failure
  • Impotence
  • Decreased libido
  • Loss of sleep

High blood pressure led to 1,300 deaths per day (472,000 total) in the United States in 2017, according to the CDC.

Your employees can’t be productive if they’re six feet under!

Focusing on wellness and living healthier only improves quality of life and productivity for your employees.

So, why not have them get annual screenings for these common health problems that lead to serious issues down the road?