Physical health-checks
Physical health-checks
Once treatment has started, it’s important to have regular physical health-checks to make sure that you, or the person you are caring for, has good overall health. The doctor or nurse may well do tests to look at the following:
- Weight
- Blood pressure
- Blood sugar levels
- Cholesterol
The doctor or nurse can also explain what the results mean and see if everything is as it should be.
If meeting some of these targets is proving a struggle, ask the doctor or nurse to recommend ways to help stay on track.
What do the health-checks mean?
Find out more about weight checks:
Some treatments for schizophrenia can cause people to gain weight, which can then affect other areas of physical health.
To find out what is a healthy weight for you, or the person you care for, click here.
If you, or the person you care for, need help achieving a healthy weight, some useful tools can be found here.
Find out more about blood pressure checks:
People with schizophrenia can be at risk of having high blood pressure. If you, or the person you care for, have high blood pressure it can increase the chances of developing serious long-term health conditions, such as coronary heart disease and kidney disease. Therefore, patients with schizophrenia should have their blood pressure checked regularly.
To find out how you, or the person you care for, can have their blood pressure checked, click here.
To learn about how blood pressure is measured, click here.
If you, or the person you care for, have recently had a blood pressure check, click here to see if it is in a healthy range, and what to do if it is too high.
Find out more about blood test results:
People with schizophrenia can develop high blood cholesterol levels and diabetes. These can both have serious complications, so keeping control of blood cholesterol and sugar levels is important in having good physical health. These levels can be checked with a simple blood test.
To learn about how to prepare for a blood test, and what happens during the test, click here.
To find out what is measured during a cholesterol test, and what the results could mean, click here.
For information on what diabetes is, what is measured during a blood test, and how to live with diabetes, click here.
