You submit to the annual pokes and prods—and the copays and the “say-ahhs”—to stay healthy and put your mind at ease. But your annual health checkup might be doing more harm than good, finds a major new study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).  A research team from Denmark reviewed decades of health data on more than 180,000 adults in Europe and the US. After first parsing out which people had received annual health checkups, researchers analyzed their health outcomes. From there, they were able to tabulate the likelihood of death due to cancer, heart disease, or all-cause mortality (the sum total of annual deaths in a given population), and determine whether annual physicals played any role in minimizing illness. Among healthy adults, annual medical visits had no positive impact on long-term health outcomes. In fact, researchers found that many routine checkups led to the over-diagnosis and over-treatment of relatively mild health problems, such as hypertension, leading some patients to take medication for years with no apparent benefit.   More from Prevention: The Health Tests Every Woman Needs It seems surprising that a visit to the doc can be a bad thing, but more checkups almost invariably lead to more screenings and tests, says lead study author Lasse Krogsbøll, PhD, a physician at the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen. “The more tests done, the greater the chance of finding something abnormal,” Krogsbøll explains. “Finding abnormalities often leads to life-long drug treatments, which studies have shown are often unnecessary.” Annual physicals also pose additional risks, says the BMJ’s primary care editor, Domhnall MacAuley, MD, who published a response to the Danish study. If a doctor awards you a clean bill of health, you might continue unhealthy behaviors that eventually cause problems. On the flip side, false-positive test results can cause unwarranted anxiety and stress for patients, Dr. MacAuley says.  So should you ditch your annual physical? Not necessarily, Dr. MacAuley advises. If family history or lifestyle factors put you at risk for certain conditions, then an annual checkup might spot a serious problem early enough to prevent it altogether, or at least treat it effectively. Healthy patients should consult with their doctor about an optimal appointment schedule, as well as getting the recommended screenings. More from Prevention: Get The Medical Treatment You Deserve