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Health at 18
What is due at 18: Your twenties — sleep 7-9 h, protein 0.8 g/kg, plus the screenings and checks of the decade.
Your twenties
Peak muscle, peak bone, peak recovery — and the decade the habits set. Body weight tracks the lifestyle that starts now, and the strength built in the twenties is the reserve spent after sixty.
| Your numbers at 18 | Value |
|---|---|
| Sleep need | 7-9 h |
| Protein target | 0.8 g/kg |
| Estimated max heart rate | 202 bpm (220 − age) |
Screenings due this decade
- Blood pressure — every year or two; it is the cheapest check there is and the twenties are when high values first appear.
- Sexual health screening — chlamydia and gonorrhoea testing for anyone with new partners.
- Cervical screening (women) — from the age the national programme starts (25-30 in the Baltic and Nordic programmes).
- Skin — a self-check of moles once a season; melanoma in this decade is rare but fast.
Checks worth doing
- Blood pressure, once a year.
- Weight and waist, twice a year — trend matters more than any single number.
- A full blood count if periods are heavy or diet is irregular.
Nothing in the twenties needs fixing on a schedule; the point of checks here is a baseline. Two or three recorded numbers per year — blood pressure, weight, resting heart rate — become the trend lines that catch change decades before symptoms would.
Act on it
- Your calorie and protein needs — the calculator turns the grams into food.
- Fitness reference values — the tests behind the checks.
- Blood test reference ranges — what the results mean.
Reference, not medical advice. Follow your national screening programme's invitations and your clinician's schedule — this page summarises the published recommendations, it does not replace them.