As the old saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” preventing active failures in healthcare is critical to your long-term health and well-being over the course of your life. Every year countless people undergo procedures and get put on medications by their doctors for entirely preventable reasons. Even an average level of prevention and caring for your body can stop or even reverse developing diseases and conditions that may cause you harm. This guide will explain tried and true methods to keep your body healthy and how best to avoid active failures in healthcare.
Schedule a Check-Up Every Year
The first place to start with preventing active failures in healthcare is to get a good understanding of what your overall health looks like. Start by calling up your doctor’s office and get a check-up scheduled. You may even have to ask for additional services or ask if they can do a comprehensive health screening to check all aspects of your health. Often times this may include taking blood samples and doing lab testing. Getting this done will give you and your doctor a good understanding of your current health and areas where you can improve. This also helps establish a record of what your health was and how it may be changing over time.
Be sure to get this done at least once a year with your doctor and make sure they are being as comprehensive as possible. Doing this yearly is a great way to catch possible active failures in healthcare before they become major problems down the road or later in life. Again, a small amount of prevention now is worth much more than a great cure later on. So, why not just prevent an issue from arising in the first place? Doing this can also lower your costs for medical treatment since you are preventing major problems and won’t need expensive surgery or fixes.
Care for Your Teeth
A great example of using prevention to avoid active failures in healthcare is by caring for your teeth. Our modern diets are filled with sugar and additives which help promote bad bacteria in our mouths. This bad bacteria eats and feeds off of our tooth enamel and gums. Sometimes that can lead to gum disease, cavities, and the receding of your gum lines if it becomes bad enough. Therefore it’s very important to take good care of your teeth in an effort to prevent cavities and other mouth-related issues that may become more severe later in life.
By simply brushing your teeth, using floss, avoiding sugary drinks, and using mouthwash, you can avoid losing your teeth or the need for expensive procedures. It’s best to use a soft-bristle toothbrush along with toothpaste that re-mineralizes your teeth to repair and protect tooth enamel. It’s also a good idea to floss at least once a day or after every meal and brush your teeth for 5 minutes 2-3 times per day. However, in some rare cases even caring for your teeth may not be enough. If you do follow good dental hygiene and still have bleeding gums or sore gums then you may need periodontal treatment. That is a specialist who works with gums and gum health. These specialists are great resources for keeping your gums and overall mouth biome happy and healthy.
Get Enough Sleep
Some of the best health advice and ways to prevent active failures in healthcare are simple, yet essential. Getting enough sleep is perhaps the most critical aspect of your health and cannot be overlooked. In today’s busy society it’s very easy to stay up late watching the latest shows and get up early to go to work or take care of the children. But, the truth is, you need at least 8 hours of sleep every single night. Interestingly, getting too little sleep during the week and trying to catch up on the weekend doesn’t actually work. Instead, your body needs consistent sleep every night. A great way to get into the habit of getting enough sleep is to wake up at the same time every day, even on the weekends. This will get your body into a habit of when it’s time to fall asleep as well.
You may also be wondering, is it really a big deal if you miss a few hours of sleep each night? It actually is, since poor sleep has been linked to numerous health problems and slower mental capacity. Bad sleep habits also don’t allow your brain to fully reset every night which could lead to major active failures in healthcare later in life. If you believe you have poor sleep quality even though you are getting 8 hours in every night then you could suffer from sleep apnea. This condition causes breathing problems when sleeping and leads to much less effective sleep. Therefore getting sleep apnea treatment may be the key.
Look After Your Gut
Aside from getting plenty of sleep, taking good care of your gut health is another highly important aspect of your health. Your gut is responsible for digesting your food well, but also for keeping your immune system strong and making sure your brain is happy. That’s right, your gut actually produces more serotonin than your brain. In people who are happy and healthy, their gut is the key source of their good health. This is why it’s so important to look after your gut by doing things to keep it healthy.
In order to keep your gut healthy you should first avoid foods that will cause issues. For some this may mean you need to avoid dairy if you’re lactose intolerant. Others may need to avoid sugar or gluten in order to keep their gut healthy. You may also want to introduce a wide variety of healthy foods like fruits and vegetables as well. It’s also a good idea to add fermented foods into your diet like greek yogurt, sauerkraut, and kefir among others. Fermented foods are actually great sources of healthy bacteria. This means every time you eat fermented foods, your actually introducing a bunch of good bacteria into your gut. You may also want to consider adding a probiotic into your daily routine as well if you don’t like eating fermented foods as much. If you do these things your digestive health will be in good order.
Set Boundaries If You Have Preexisting Conditions
If you are already suffering from some health condition then it will be important to prevent that condition from becoming worse. A great way to stop conditions from getting worse is by setting boundaries to protect yourself. For example, if you have asthma it may be a good idea to monitor your local air quality index on a daily basis. If the air quality is poor then you will need to either wear a mask or stay inside more often in order to avoid being sent to an asthma hospital. In other cases, you may need to avoid certain dietary boundaries like eating too much sugar or fat.
Either way, talk with your doctor about what conditions you should avoid and make those boundaries in your daily life. This way you can avoid doing things that will make your health condition even worse.
Limit Your Use of Drugs and Alcohol
A very simple yet effective method of preventing active failures in healthcare is by avoiding and minimizing the number of drugs and alcohol you use. Drugs can even include your favorite beverages that have caffeine in them. Caffeine is actually quite bad for human health and is considered one of the most addictive drugs in the world. You will also want to avoid other drugs that may cause future active failures in healthcare for you. After all, there is a reason drugs are treated with a taboo since many of them can cause health failures in the long run.
Therefore, it may be important to seek out resources that can help you stop or prevent drug and alcohol abuse. If you feel you cannot control when you use drugs, or if you use them often then you should consider going to rehab. In some cases, you can even find a doctor or team of specialists who focus on your specific issues. If you use marijuana for example and find that it has taken over your life, you may want to visit a marijuana doctor service who can help you quit or at least manage your use. Doing this will help you regain control of your life and stop bad habits like eating too sleep or not getting enough sleep.
Recognize That Your Pet’s Health May Impact Your Own
Often times we think that only we control our own health. But, this is not always the case. In fact, your health is often determined by the things, places, and people around you. For example, the pets you keep can have indirect and direct impacts on your physical and mental health. Directly if you have pets that can carry diseases then your pet could pass that disease on to you. For example, if your cat scratches you it may pass cat scratch fever onto you. This is a minor issue but can cause you to get flu-like symptoms and miss work for days at a time.
In other cases, if you have a pet that causes you stress or one that you are allergic to, then it may be time to find your pet a new home. In other cases, if you are allergic to your home pet, you may want to speak with your doctor about allergy medicines and other tips to minimize your symptoms. So be sure to take your beloved furry friends to an animal doctor to make sure they are also in good health. Make sure to also practice good prevention and avoid needing to take your pet for an emergency to animal hospitals.
Protect Yourself Into Adulthood and Beyond
As you age, it will also be important to adjust your lifestyle. For example, good geriatrics says that you should take up some form of active movement daily to maintain good hip and joint range of motion and stability. As you age your joints actually begin to break down over time. This means you will get less flexible unless you continue to stretch your joints and muscles daily. It may be a good idea to take up yoga or some other form of active movement! You may also want to start taking daily vitamins and minerals that your body may be deficient in. For instance, the older population usually needs to take calcium supplements to keep their bones strong over time.
Know What Resources Are Available to You
Another great way to avoid active failures in healthcare is by understanding what kind of resources you have available. There are many different specialists and professionals who can help you achieve your health goals and maintain them in the long run. It may be helpful to go to several professionals like yoga instructors, massage therapists, personal trainers, and even nutritionists in order to help maintain a healthy body. By having these professionals work with you, they will offer the best treatments and prevention to avoid active failures in healthcare. In other scenarios, if you have been injured or harmed in some way, it may be a good idea to hire medical malpractice attorneys for your protection.
Prevention Is Key
Overall, staying healthy now and using prevention as a tool is going to be the most important health decision you can make. By taking care of your body, you can avoid active healthcare failures that may occur later in life. Be sure to get an annual check-up from your doctor to monitor your health and track your progress over time. Also make sure to follow the basics like getting plenty of sleep every night, drinking only water, eating right, exercising, avoiding drugs and alcohol, and being sure to destress as often as possible.
