You’ve probably been asked a few times today, “How are you?” If you’re like most Canadians, no matter what is ailing you—a headache, a nagging worry—your automatic and unspecific reply tends to be: Good. Fine. Not bad. Okay. You?

That casual response may cost you years of life, or at least compromise the quality of the time you have left. “Symptoms are often the first sign of a developing disease or health issue,” says Dr. Elaine Chin, co-founder and chief medical officer of Scienta Health, a private medical clinic in Toronto. Most of us don’t pay much attention to these signs. “We grin and bear them. Fatigue, congestion, irritable bowel, we ignore them because they’re common,” says Chin. “But that doesn’t mean you’re healthy.”

Last spring, Maclean’s and Scienta Health published a test in this magazine and at www.macleans.ca to help readers identify symptoms they experience (and how often and how intensely) that may be clues to underlying health problems. More than 5,100 people completed the Q-GAP online (anonymously, if they preferred). We’ve put the entire Q-GAP test on our website again for people who haven’t yet examined their health status—or who want to find out how they’re doing one year later. The quiz asks 75 questions divided into nine categories, such as musculoskeletal and urological/gynecological systems. Last year’s results provide a fascinating snapshot of our readers’ health—and show that many people experience similar symptoms.

When Chin and her team tallied last year’s online results, 10 symptoms emerged as the most common problems facing our readers: indigestion, bloating and gas; fatigue and sluggishness; difficulty losing weight; low endurance during athletic activity; loss of sex drive, erectile dysfunction among men and vaginal dryness among women; muscle aches and joint pains; insufficient or disrupted sleep; cravings; headaches and sinus congestion; and unhappiness with a spouse, partner or family.

None of these symptoms may seem all that serious—and on their own they may not be. But Chin believes we should strive for optimal health rather than ignore or get used to negative symptoms until we can bear them no longer. By then, she says, chronic illness may be present. “We need to diagnose and treat disease but this alone is not enough,” Chin says. “This is reactive medicine.” Instead she recommends we be proactive and address seemingly insignificant problems as soon as they show up.

Females, it seems, experienced symptoms more intensely or frequently than males, the results show. “There are differences between how men and women respond to symptoms,” says Chin; research suggests men usually underestimate them. However, as women age, the severity or frequency of symptoms don’t fluctuate much. In men, the results indicate a dramatic spike between the ages of 46 to 55. What’s more, very young and old people experienced the symptom extremes—they either had the most frequent and intense symptoms for just about every category or the least compared to individuals in the middle range of ages.

Emotional problems are the leading symptom experienced by all people at every age. This may not be surprising given surging depression rates. Chin notes the link between psychosocial wellness and physical health is important. “Mind and body are connected,” she says. A recent study in the British Journal of Psychiatry reveals that people with recurrent depression have higher rates of physical disorders, including gastric ulcers, osteoarthritis, thyroid disease, hypertension and asthma.