Get Regular Health Checkups! Your Heart Will Thank You

Doctor's appointments, insurance and the likes can all get quite costly overtime. In today's society, many of us are reluctant to go to the doctor for that very reason-and this includes regular checkups.

Yet recent findings published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation revealed that people who saw the doctor at least 3.2 times a year were more likely to keep their blood pressure under control than those who saw their physician once a year or less.

For the study, researchers found that having health insurance and getting treated for high cholesterol also improved the chances of keeping blood pressure in check. Study authors based their information on data form 37,000 adults in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey who had their blood pressure checked between 1999 to 2012.

Furthermore, they found that all of these applied to obese people who said that a doctor's watchful eye helped them to significantly keep their blood pressure under control.

Lead study author Dr. Brent M. Egan, M.D., a professor of medicine at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Greenville and senior medical director of the Care Coordination Institute noted that this is "probably because doctors recognize the need to control risk factors and may be quicker to give them blood pressure medications."

Even after taking certain factors into account, including diabetes, smoking, body mass index (BMI) and smoking, researchers noted that the findings still held true to their theories.