Health Screenings: What to Test for at 60 and Beyond
Disease prevention is far superior to the best treatments. By the time a serious illness is diagnosed, treatment can be complex, costly, and disruptive. That’s why regular health screenings are so important – especially after age 60, when risks for heart disease, cancer, and other chronic conditions rise. Here are the essential tests that can help catch problems early and improve your chances of living a long, healthy life.
Blood Work: The Body’s Report Card
Routine blood tests provide an inside look at how your body is functioning. At 60 and beyond, doctors recommend a panel that includes advanced lipid profile, blood sugar, electrolytes, kidney function, liver enzymes, and complete blood count. These results act as a “report card,” catching signs of diabetes, anemia, or organ dysfunction before symptoms appear. For example, elevated fasting blood sugar may point to prediabetes – a condition that can often be reversed with diet and exercise.
Cardiac Profiling: Protecting Your Heart
Heart disease remains the number one cause of death in older adults. Beyond standard blood pressure checks and cholesterol levels, more detailed cardiac profiling may include an electrocardiogram (EKG), echocardiogram, advanced cardiovascular profile (blood work), advanced coronary artery imaging, or even a stress test, depending on your history.
These tests reveal how well your heart is pumping and whether arteries may be narrowing. For individuals with a family history of heart disease, more advanced scans like coronary calcium scoring, or the AI software assisted Cleerly Scan (where available) can detect silent buildup years before symptoms occur.
Mammograms: Breast Cancer Screening
Breast cancer risk increases with age, and mammograms remain one of the best tools for early detection. Most guidelines recommend women continue regular annual mammograms through at least age 74, though frequency may vary based on personal and family history. For women in good health at 60, staying consistent with annual screenings is essential. Catching breast cancer early often means less aggressive treatment and better survival rates.
Pap Smears: Cervical Cancer Screening
Pap smears, which detect precancerous changes in the cervix, are often phased out after age 65 if a woman has had a history of normal results and no major risk factors. However, it’s important not to stop too early. And remember, even if you’re no longer getting pap smears, we still need regular pelvic examinations to assess for masses or other problems.
Some women may need continued pap smears past 60, especially if they’ve had irregular results or certain hormonal exposures in the past. Discussing your individual risk profile with your doctor helps ensure nothing is overlooked.
Colonoscopies: Prevention Through Detection
Colon cancer is highly preventable when caught early. Colonoscopies not only detect cancer but can also remove polyps before they become dangerous. Adults are usually advised to begin regular screening by at least age 45, but at 60 and beyond, it becomes especially crucial.
If you’ve had a normal colonoscopy, you may only need repeat testing every 10 years, but high-risk individuals may require more frequent exams. Newer, less invasive stool-based tests can sometimes be an alternative, though colonoscopy remains the gold standard. Getting a colonoscopy can actually prevent colon cancer – and that’s something worth doing.
The Bottom Line
Turning 60 is a milestone worth celebrating – and it’s also a reminder to take preventive health seriously. Blood work, heart tests, cancer screenings, and colonoscopies are not just routine – they are life-saving tools. Prevention gives you the power to act before illness strikes, making it far superior to even the best treatments. Investing in these tests is really an investment in more years of vitality, independence, and joy.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
What tests do you do on a regular basis? Have you skipped any this year? Have preventive tests found a medical problem, thus saving your life from complications?
Tags Medical Conditions
Medical intervention after 70 can have a flip side. Medical intervention may be able to extend life, BUT remember, it extends a time in our lives that is old age. With surgeries, oncology, and medications, my parents and aunts lived into their 90s. They could no longer care for themselves, lived with chronic arthritis pain, and were blind from macular degeneration. Perhaps they “stayed too long at the fair?”
We are very lucky in Australia as the government rolled out comprehensive, yearly bowel cancer testing. You receive a test kit and send your sample off and if there are any issues you are notified within a week or so.
I am also sent a reminder every year to have my breast cancer screen at a local centre near where I live.
I am lucky to live where I do.
I have lymphodema and when I read about the lack of care and awful expense in one supposedly “first world country,” on my lymphodema fb support group, I am truly shocked.
I urge all women over 65 to still get a gynecological exam for pelvic floor health. Many women suffer in silence with prolapse. It is challenging to find an ob/gyn doctor in many parts of the US willing to treat older women past child-bearing years.
Haven’t seen a doctor in a few years as I don’t have one
I have a wonderful family doctor. She is very good at keeping up with my blood work and necessary tests. If I do have an issue (even a small one), she follows through and makes sure everything is ok.