Home health tests are readymade kits available in the nearest chemist shop or on the online marketplace. These home health tests allow us to keep track of diseases or where we need to check numbers in terms of our health. You can keep a check on particular diseases or conditions to ensure safety.
To test with home health tests, you’ll need a sample. A sample of your saliva, urine, or blood and utilize it on the kit as written on it. These kits are available without a doctor’s prescription at the chemist’s shop. Some of them give immediate results while some are to be mailed to a pathology lab. Some home health tests are:
- Blood sugar level and blood pressure level.
- Fecal occult blood test to see for colon cancer
- Pregnancy tests.
- To check for infectious diseases like HIV, Covid 19, and hepatitis.
Here is what an expert needs you to know about home health tests:
From the comfort of your own home, you can take health tests. So let’s call it home health tests. If you do not want to go to a lab test as you’re aged or have any other condition, like you just don’t want to go there as you feel agitated in there, you can do the home health tests at home. They are:
- Pregnancy Test
- Urinary Tract Infections.
- Vaginal pH
- HIV test.
- Menopause
- Cholesterol.
These are some home health tests you can do at home. Doing these tests from your home is comforting and allows privacy. It is recommended that before doing the home health tests you should check whether the Food and Drug Association has tested the product. It evaluates these products in terms of validity, accuracy, and safety in these clinical trials. There may be times when you need to test more than once or twice when it comes to home health tests. It is so because you should get an accurate result. For tests like HIV or pregnancy tests, it is better to repeat the test more than twice to be on the safe side.
Advantages of home health tests:
1. No stigma:
For home health tests like HIV, it is better to do it at home as you’ll not sense the stigma at your home like in the hospital. Whether positive or negative results, there’s always a fear of the upcoming result in tests like pregnancy or HIV tests. So it’s better to do it in the comfort of our home.
2. Immediate results:
In these tests, you get the results within minutes or even seconds. As the results are so immediate and prompt you can start taking action as soon as possible.
3. No need for transportation:
The main advantage of these tests is you don’t need to go anywhere. If you’re aged, live in rural areas, or physically challenged whatever is the case, there’s no need for you to travel.
4. Call if in doubt:
When you do these tests at home, you can contact the helpline numbers mentioned on the packing if in doubt. They will connect with you on call if required. Doubts in regard to understanding your results, the functioning of the device, or any other problems you can call them to solve all your doubts.
Disadvantages of home health tests:
1. Wrong conclusions:
As you’re doing the tests from home, you can come up with the wrong conclusions. It will directly affect your diagnosis, medications, and treatment. It will become a life-threatening issue. Cases of false positives cases lead to huge problems.
2. Improper storage of sample:
As you’re not a professional in this, the storage can be wrongly done by you. If the samples are wrongly stored, they will give false results and you will have to repeat the test or will take the wrong medicines.
3. Stress:
If the test comes positive when doing it at home, you need to contact your doctor. For confirmation, the doctor may tell you to repeat the test this time at a pathology lab. It will increase the stress and anxiety of the results again. Also, as you end up doing the test twice, you spend double. So it’s a waste of money twice. It’s better to do the tests in a pathology lab as they’re professionals. They know their job better.
4. Hiding some problems:
In some cases, people do not want to reveal all the things they’re going through to the doctor. Hence, they opt for doing these tests at home. It will only be inconvenient for them as you want to overlook a particular problem.
5. Confusion:
You may end up being confused if you don’t understand the results. The guidance given via the helpline number may also not be as easy for you to process. You may not understand a single word told by them in accordance with the doubts asked.
Conclusion:
These tests are a convenient way of testing yourself for some diseases. Confirming the same is important too. To ensure accuracy, check whether it is approved and gone through a quality check by the Food and Drugs Association. Scrutinize the pros and cons to ensure you’re right or wrong to do the tests at home. If need be, go to the pathology lab and get yourself tested. While testing, get devices of more than one brand available in the market. Do not rely on a single test result. Confirm the given result with some other brand’s testing device too to check accuracy. If a positive result persists, contact your doctor for further guidance and treatment.
