Scorpios are the most likely to visit Cheng Ching Hospital in Taichung for health checkups, the hospital’s Executive Health Management Center said on Monday.
The findings were based on a study of the medical records of 20,000 people who used the center’s medical services over the past three years, it said.
The center published the study to encourage health checkups, director Chiang Chih-ming (江志明) said, adding that the findings are only for reference.
People born under the zodiac signs Scorpio, Virgo, Sagittarius, Libra and Pisces were the top five most likely to go for health checkups, accounting for 9.6 percent, 9 percent, 9.95 percent, 9.92 percent and 8.86 percent of visits respectively, Chiang said.
Scorpio, Cancer and Pisces — the zodiac signs associated with water — are the most attentive to their health, followed by the earth signs of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn; the fire signs of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius; and the air signs of Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, he added.
“Health checkups are important and some misconceptions about checkups should not persist in this day and age,” Chiang said.
It is not true that only old people need regular health checkups and that people should let their medication needs dictate the types of checkup they order at the hospital, instead of what the National Health Insurance program will cover, he said.
Fearing checkups because they might uncover health problems is irrational and dangerous, he added.
A survey the center conducted in 2016 found that nearly 30 percent of respondents had never had a health checkup and that the average person spends more time and money on maintaining their car than on health exams, Chiang said.
Those attitudes are not conducive to public health, especially when modern lifestyles are causing young people to develop chronic conditions doctors previously associated with advanced age, he said.
Early detection is critical for clinical outcomes, as one patient discovered after a routine checkup revealed early-stage lung cancer that was excised without complications, the center said.
In another case, a patient who lost 8kg in two months and developed a dry cough had delayed seeking medical attention long enough that by the time the center had performed checks, the cancer had already metastasized, it said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching