There's something about big birthdays that are apt to make a girl nervous. Sometimes even when they aren't yours.

Last year my husband Chris turned 50. He appears entirely healthy, and indeed, strikingly young for his age, but this was also the year that his mother died, leaving him “orphaned”, and both of us thinking glum thoughts about mortality. He's a father of three, the youngest just 3 years old, and we'd like him to stick around for a long time yet.

The fact that, at the age of 54, his lean, non-smoking, country-dwelling father had a sudden massive heart attack, followed by a series of strokes, the same condition that had killed his mother, started to prey on his mind and mine. I knew from my work as a health journalist that heart disease is hereditary, and that for half of all victims, a heart attack is the first symptom, and half of them die from that attack.

And while Chris is reasonably slim, doesn't smoke, goes running and eats up his vegetables, he also has a passion for sausage and mash, an account at Berry Brothers, the fine wine merchant, and rarely goes a day without a drink or three.

Another part of my job is that sometimes I interview men who have survived serious illnesses. One thing all of them had in common was that it was their female partners who had nagged them into seeing a GP. While women trot off for regular smears and mammograms, men tend to recoil from doctors like vampires from the light. The Government is keen to change this and earlier this year announced that Britain's middle-aged men would be offered health checks for conditions such as heart disease, strokes and diabetes.

I believe, and it seems that Gordon Brown agrees with me, that screening is generally a good idea and prevention is better than cure, especially when, with some conditions, if you don't catch them early, there ain't no cure. I also know that my husband is a stolid Yorkshireman, not prone to panic, and well able to make intelligent decisions. Which is why, with really minimal nagging, I persuade him to book into the European Scanning Centre in Harley Street for a heart CT (computerised tomography) scan. This test is undoubtedly the gold standard for predicting heart attack risks. It looks for calcium deposits in heart arteries. A stack of studies, including one just this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, clearly show that no calcium build-up pretty much equals no chance of a heart attack.

The test itself was ridiculously easy. Chris kept his clothes on and, far from being encased in a claustrophobic sealed tube, he was able to lie on a couch under a large arch that would take the superfast X-ray images. It took barely ten minutes. Half an hour later we met the centre's clinical director, Dr Paul Jenkins, for the results. We were extremely nervous by this point, hyped on caffeine and trying to be cheerful. Dr Jenkins explained that there was a scale from completely clear to dangerously congested. “Your arteries,” he continued, “are completely clear. Studies show that you have less than a 0.05 per cent chance of a heart attack in the next year or so.”

The risk of a stroke was near zero

In addition to this joyful news, the lack of furring up of Chris's heart arteries indicated that his brain arteries were similarly clear, so his risk of stroke had fallen to near zero too.

After a celebratory sandwich at Pret A Manger (extra mayonnaise, please), we headed to the Mole Clinic. Here Chris was due to get his pasty English skin examined by a cancer specialist nurse. Chris is sprinkled with moles. And one in particular, which sometimes bled, had unnerved me. The nurse agreed that a history of burning in the sun and his blue-eyed pallor made a check-up a sensible decision. In the end the scary mole turned out to be benign, and would always remain so. But I was told to keep an eye on a mole that I had never noticed before. It was harmless now, but was sufficiently different to warrant watching. This news, too, was hugely cheering and we practically danced home to celebrate with champagne.

The next day Chris had a blood test at Quest Diagnostics in Wimpole Street, London. This was to check his kidney and liver function for any signs of diabetes, allergy, thyroid trouble or high cholesterol. It also included a PSA (prostate specific antigen) test for prostate cancer (see panel left). An elevated level of PSA can be a sign of prostate cancer, which kills 10,000 men a year. But it's not a precise test. We decided that if his levels were high, we would simply monitor them with further blood tests before making any decisions on treatment.

The results, when they came back, were interesting. Chris was absolutely thrilled, and pretty smug, to discover that his liver was in fine fettle, despite his giving the government drinking guidelines a good kicking over the years. His PSA was fine too. However, his cholesterol levels, especially of the “bad” cholesterol, were quite high. I rang Dr Jenkins, who was reassuring. “His calcium score shows that even if Chris's cholesterol level is up, it's not having any effect on his heart whatsoever,” he said. “Chris clearly has genetic protection against heart disease.” Yet this sort of result without the scan might well have led a doctor to suggest an unnecessary but lifelong regimen of statin drugs to reduce Chris's cholesterol.

“Chris hasn't been on a bender”

Oddly enough, despite all his clear results, Chris hasn't been, as I feared, on a beer and sausage bender ever since. Perhaps it's the effect of focusing on his health, or a desire to remain as healthy as he is now, but if anything he has been drinking less and eating more healthily than before. Me? Despite a few nervous moments, I'm overjoyed with the results. Niggling worries that I have suppressed for years have gone.

Chris tells me that he feels happier than before, and even if the news had been bad, he'd still have been glad that he had taken the tests. As it was, our six-year-old son was able to take pictures of “Daddy's healthy heart” for show- and-tell at school, making him quite the celebrity. And Chris and I were able to raise a glass to his continued good health.

The European Scanning Centre, Harley Street, London; www.europeanscanning.com ; 020-7436 5755. Heart scan £525.

Quest Diagnostics, Wimpole Street, London; www.questdiagnostics.com ; 020-7535 1920.

Blood test £194.The Mole Clinic, branches nationwide; www.themoleclinic.co.uk ; 020-7734 1177. Full body screen from £115.

THE GP'S PERSPECTIVE BY DR KEITH HOPCROFT

Leah Hardy's story is a heart-warming - perhaps heart-saving - tale. It seems a shame to poop the party. But the truth is, this approach to health is riddled with holes, writes Keith Hopcroft, GP.

For starters, the myths. Men aren't that rubbish at seeing the doctor. Not having breasts, cervixes and uteri, they can't attend mammograms, smears, antenatal care and Pill checks. Subtract from the equation all the girlie stuff, and a large part of the gender difference in healthcare use magically disappears.

Abnormalities can be irrelevant

As for, “If you don't catch it early...” OK, that has always been the medical mantra. And in terms of acting on symptoms, such as a lump, it makes obvious sense. But not necessarily for searching for disease before it causes symptoms. Health checks and scans often reveal abnormalities that turn out to be irrelevant. If they do show significant problems then, surprisingly, treatment before the onset of symptoms may not improve the eventual outcome. So you're unnecessarily twitched Or unnecessarily treated.

There's no insurance policy

Then there's the oversimplification, such as the idea that check-ups are a health insurance policy. Believe that and you'll also believe that your car can't go wrong just after it has been serviced, which is why you're reading this on the hard shoulder of the M4. It's equally misguided to view test results as black and white. For example, a normal liver blood result doesn't “prove” a normal liver. But it does distract from the fact that alcohol, say, can damage areas hidden to a blood screen, such as nerves, pancreas, relationship and driving licence.

Crystal ball versus CT

Equally misleading is the “cardiac risk” prediction. We know far more about cardiac crystal-ball gazing via cholesterol than we do through newfangled tests such as heart CT, simply because there's a greater research base. Besides, though it's great that those coronary arteries are clear now, how often should the CT be repeated? Answer: no one knows. This apparent triumph of female common sense over male medical muppetry epitomises the tendency to view screening as Hollywood medicine: glitzy, desirable and high quality.

The truth is that a screen test is fine for casting actors, but, as an audition for illness, it's lousy. There are false negatives, false positives and false conclusions. So for every satisfied Chris, there's a Tom who is inappropriately reassured, a Dick who's unnecessarily terrified and a Harry with a false sense of security or an appointment for unwarranted treatment.

Time to change tack

Most significantly, an obsession with health checks undermines basic medical principles. It overemphasises the importance of tests while teaching people not to trust their bodies to tell them when something's up. So if a female partner wants to perpetuate the gender health stereotype with well-intentioned pestering, I'd suggest a change of tack: sure, maintain the lifestyle makeover, but value the significance of symptoms over the seduction of screening. I'm not looking for more work, unlike private screeners, but even I'd drink to that.

PROSTATE CANCER MYTHS AND FACTS BY SIMON CROMPTON

Your prostate is “the size and shape of a walnut”

Misleading, though constantly trotted out by charities. Actually, an apricot is a far better analogy for this organ that sits in the pelvis below the bladder. Like fruits, the prostate has an indentation at the top, through which passes the tube carrying urine from the bladder. That's why an enlarged prostate means problems peeing.

Your prostate is a problem

Hardly. All that most people know about the prostate is that it gets cancer. We chaps should rejoice in it a little more. Not only does it produce the fluids that carry and nourish our sperm; not only is it a complex chemical factory; it's also the male G-spot and produces many of our sexual kicks.

Men who get prostate cancer are the unlucky minority

Fiction. It's not often said because it sounds frightening, but getting prostate cancer could be said to be the norm rather than the exception as men get older. Over the past 30 years prostate cancer rates in Britain have tripled, but this is because of increased detection through PSA tests and the fact that we are living longer. Knowing that you have prostate cancer in your fifties is certainly bad, but for a man aged 85 it's largely a reflection of the fact that he has been lucky enough not to die of something else earlier. Of the millions of middle-aged men who are never tested, research suggests that a third may have sluggish, relatively harmless prostate cancer and most will never know it.

You cannot reduce your risk of prostate cancer

Hogwash. Though it's your genes, your ethnic background and age that are the main risk factors, eating healthily seems to have a preventive role. The Prostate Cancer Charity says that cutting down on animal fat and eating more fruit and veg may lower your chances of prostate cancer. Recent research has indicated that broccoli, in particular, protects because it changes

the way our genes express themselves. The jury remains out on supplements based on extracts of tomato, pomegranate and red clover.

Masturbation prevents prostate cancer

Probably true, according to credible recent research, which found that men who ejaculated more than five times a week (solo, or with a partner) between the ages of 20 and 50 were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life - probably because their orgasms were flushing out cancer-causing chemicals in their prostate. Sex with a partner, however, may pose a small risk of infection transmission, which could cancel the benefits.

The Prostate Cancer Charity: www.prostate-cancer.org.uk 0800 0748383

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