I am a self-confessed hypochondriac. My medical anxiety started early. When Adrian Mole discovered a phantom spot or measured his existential angst in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, I too immediately checked myself into my bedroom, convinced that my stomach ache was in fact a rare disease that doctors had yet to classify rather than the result of too many Pop Tarts coupled with exam stress.
Motherhood hasn't helped. (EVERYTHING is potentially meningitis.) Neither has losing both my parents to cancer relatively young. And don't even get me started on ChatGPT, which I've recently had to take an enforced break from after one too many late-night symptom spirals.
But it was one of my closest friends being diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer last year at just 48 - with no symptoms apart from a single visit to A&E with abdominal spasms - that sent my anxiety into overdrive. Add to that the fact that my own 50th birthday is looming (my mother died at 56), and suddenly preventative healthcare stopped feeling like wellness culture and started feeling like self-preservation.
The rise of the full-body health MOT
If there were ever a Venn diagram of health anxiety and modern technology, I'd be living in the overlap. Preventative health testing is booming. Companies like Neko Health have amassed a waiting list of more than 300,000 people for its £299 body scan, while full-body MRI scans have become the latest wellness flex across social media.
© Formula 1 via Getty ImagesKim Kardashian has credited one (Prenuvo) with identifying an aneurysm while US TV host Maria Menounos found her early-stage pancreatic cancer thanks to a full body scan. But while celebrity endorsements make them seem like the future of healthcare, many doctors remain cautious, warning that full-body MRIs can uncover harmless abnormalities that trigger unnecessary anxiety, invasive investigations and expensive follow-up tests.
Why I finally booked one
Naturally, I have been desperate to have one, but I’ve always found the baseline cost prohibitive. Although it feels like an investment a mother of two young boys should make, there’s always a competing desire to spend that money on a sunny holiday instead, bypassing the risky reality of actually looking under the bonnet. Interestingly, when an offer came in last year for someone in the Hello! offices to experience a £14,000 Echelon Health check (dubbed ‘the world’s most comprehensive health assessment’), several colleagues opted out of putting their names in the hat. Their reasoning? They’d rather not know. Apparently, us Gen X-ers tend to be far more nervous about peering inside; we didn't grow up tracking every metric of our daily health.
Then my friend received her palliative diagnosis. At almost exactly the same time I discovered Ezra, part of Function Health, which has dramatically reduced the cost of full-body MRI screening thanks to AI-assisted reporting. At £1,299, it's the first time this kind of scan has fallen below the £1,500 mark, attracting high-profile clients including Sienna Miller, Millie Mackintosh and Trinny Woodall.
Inside the scan
Having previously undergone an MRI after the traumatic birth of my first son, I wasn't exactly excited. For anyone who's never had one, imagine being trapped (snugly) inside the waste pipe of a very loud techno club while an angry robot communicates exclusively through Morse code. You're instructed not to move for what feels like an eternity, clutching an emergency panic button that feels tantalisingly easy to push.
Thankfully, this experience felt a bit different. Yes, there's still the soundtrack of industrial banging, but I was given headphones so I could mete out the minutes via 80s classics and the scan itself lasted just 22 minutes - roughly half the time of a conventional MRI. Granted, it's still essentially a luxury space coffin. But sliding into a sleek, multimillion-pound machine in comfy pyjamas somehow makes you feel less like a patient and more like premium cargo being carefully shipped across the galaxy. Oddly, it felt reassuring and I leant into the sense of smugness I got from being proactive about my health.
What does it look for?
"An MRI is a screening modality that we use because it's harmless," explains Ezra UK Medical Director Dr Dan Brook. "It uses magnetism rather than radiation and doesn't require any injections or contrast dyes. Although it might feel unusual, it's actually one of the least invasive ways of looking throughout the body." Crucially, he stresses that it isn't a replacement for NHS screening programmes. "It complements them," he says. "You should still attend breast screening, bowel cancer screening and cervical screening. MRI is excellent at looking across the whole body, but it won't replace the bowel screening kits you're offered after 50. If someone develops symptoms like pain or bleeding, they still need diagnostic investigations such as ultrasound or CT scans."
Waiting for the results
The surprise? Once I'd actually had the scan, I wasn't nearly as anxious about receiving my results as I'd expected. Instead, I felt strangely... empowered. A few days later I received a notification saying my report was ready, along with the option to book a consultation with Dr Dan. I deliberately avoided opening the report beforehand. I know myself well enough to realise that Googling unfamiliar medical terminology would only lead to panic.
© STEVEN HAREWOODThe report grades findings from one to five, with one requiring no follow-up and five representing an emergency. Mine contained a couple of level threes - non-urgent follow-up recommended. There was a tiny lesion on my spleen, most likely a benign haemangioma. A few small kidney cysts. A simple ovarian cyst, all considered within normal physiological limits. Reading those words alone might have sent me into meltdown. Hearing them explained didn't.
The things we worry about (that turn out to be normal)
"This is a perfectly normal scan for someone in their late forties," Dr Dan reassured me. "We've been looking at skin for thousands of years, so we're used to seeing moles and little lumps. But when people discover the internal equivalent - a cyst or haemangioma - they become frightened. Actually, they're incredibly common."
© Getty ImagesMore than half of adults, he explains, will develop harmless cysts in organs such as the liver or kidneys. "The things that worry us look very different." Brain health, unsurprisingly, is another major source of anxiety. "As people enter their forties and fifties we see lots of concerns about dementia," he says. Like many women navigating perimenopause - and every forgotten name or misplaced phone (while on the phone) - I admit Alzheimer's had become one of my latest irrational fears. Thankfully, my brain and neck scans were entirely normal. The team also frequently identify fatty liver disease, gallstones and aortic aneurysms during routine scans, particularly in patients in their fifties and sixties.
Is there a danger of overdiagnosis?
This is perhaps the biggest criticism levelled at full-body MRI screening. Could we end up worrying healthy people unnecessarily? Dr Dan acknowledges the debate but sees the greater risk elsewhere.
"I'd counter that there's also a risk of underdiagnosis," he says."For patients who have come through our system with serious, life-shortening conditions that otherwise would have gone completely unnoticed, that's where the value lies."
Would I recommend it?
Without question. Yes, £1,299 remains a significant amount of money. But after watching a healthy, active 48-year-old friend receive a terminal cancer diagnosis, it's difficult not to think differently about prevention.
Broken down, it works out at around £25 a week over a year - roughly the cost of swapping your daily caramel macchiato for the office cafetière. That's still a privilege many simply can't afford and something I'll have to reassess myself depending on boilers behaving themselves etc. But if you can, it may be one of the most reassuring investments you'll make.
Can you ever really cure health anxiety?
One question lingered after I'd received my all-clear. Would I simply find something else to worry about?Another close friend who discovered she carries the BRCA1 gene and subsequently underwent a preventative double mastectomy and hysterectomy told me reducing her cancer risk hadn't eliminated her anxiety. If anything, it had sharpened it. But Dr Dan believes the greatest value isn't a single scan but building longitudinal data over time. "I think that within a few years," he says, "routine body scans will become much like annual blood pressure or cholesterol checks. People will monitor changes over time rather than waiting until symptoms appear." Preventative medicine, he believes, is not only better for patients but ultimately far more economical than treating advanced disease.
As for me? I know one scan isn't a lifetime guarantee. It simply buys me a period of reassurance before life, and ageing, continues. But for the first time in a while, I don't feel helpless. I feel like I've done something. As Dr Dan puts it: "People want to feel they have agency over their health."
After years of catastrophising every ache, pain and Google search, I finally understand exactly what he means.
