Staying healthy in your peak earning years

Just a few years ago the gold standard for an annual checkup was an exhaustive battery of high-tech probing.

Now the pendulum has swung back toward a simpler approach, partly because physicians have found that excessive testing sometimes sets off false alarms, leading to expensive and risky follow-ups.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a panel of medical experts that evaluates the costs, risks and benefits of various tests, has rejected many once common exams as unnecessary every year for healthy adults.

Nevertheless, get a checkup once a year or so.