How Much Do You Really Understand Your Own Health?
It’s a pretty common fact of life that most of us are pretty concerned with our health. And this is great! After all, your health is one of the most important things that you have and being able to take care of yourself means that you’re going to be able to live the best and happiest life possible. However, there is an issue when it comes to a lot of people taking care of their health and that’s that they try and impact their health without really understanding it. This doesn’t mean that people don’t know what a healthy lifestyle generally looks like, but rather that they don’t know what a “healthy” means in the context of them specifically. The reality is that every single person is different and, while there might be some elements of a healthy life that are universal among just about everyone, we all have different relationships to our health and wellbeing. With that in mind, here are some things to consider when trying to better understand your own health.
Your body shape
Most of us have a pretty tumultuous relationship with our bodies, and that’s putting it lightly. The reality is that body image, weight, and appearance can often occupy a huge amount of many people’s thoughts for good or ill. However, one of the most common mistakes that a lot of people make is that they don’t really understand their body, particularly their body shape. The reality is that everyone’s body is different and what “healthy” looks like on one body is almost certainly going to be different from what it looks like on someone else’s body. As much as society might try to insist that you should only ever look a certain way, the truth is that it’s impossible for everyone to look the same. Don’t assume that your body is wrong or unhealthy just because it doesn’t look the way that the world around you so often tries to convince you that it should.
Your food
Eating healthily is a crucial part of any healthy lifestyle but what “healthy eating” actually means is something that a lot of people really don’t understand in the way that they might think they do. Healthy eating is not just cutting calories and sticking to salads all day, every day. Sure, salads and cutting calories can be beneficial to some people in some situations but the reality is that everyone responds differently to food and you need to understand your body’s relationship to food if you want to be able to eat in a way that’s genuinely healthy. This isn’t just a matter of eating too much or too little either. It also involves things like understanding which foods you might be, in some way, intolerant of. Whether that’s dairy, gluten, or anything else, knowing how your body responds to certain foods means that you’re going to be able to make much more informed decisions about how to adjust your diet in a way that is as healthy and positive as possible.
Something else that directly impacts your food is your oral health. There are tons of foods out there that are extremely beneficial to your teeth. But, as such, you also need to schedule regular checkups at your local orthodontist, especially if you have or had braces in the past. Your orthodontist will not only be able to give you an accurate update on your oral health, but also provide you with the necessary knowledge to conitue with the correct care in a way that will leave your teeth looking healthy and pearly white!
Pre-existing conditions
The sheer number of people who go through their lives unable to live as healthily or happily as they would like to simply because they don’t understand that they have some variety of pre-existing condition that directly impacts their body and their health is shockingly large. Trying to live healthily when you don’t realise that there is something specific about your health or your body that gets in the way can feel like you’re stuck on a treadmill: working hard and never going anywhere. This could be a condition that makes eating certain foods impossible, or something like scoliosis that causes not only pain but difficulty in living an active life. If you want to be able to deal with these things then the best thing that you can do is to speak to a professional. From a registered dietician to somewhere like the Southwest Scoliosis Institute, professional help is often absolutely essential to making sure that you’re able to manage any conditions that you may have that are preventing you from living your life the way that you want to.
Your mental health
It’s a sad fact that a lot of people treat their mental wellbeing as though it’s entirely separate from their health. That’s if they actually consider their mental wellbeing in the first place. There’s a whole lot of stigma surrounding mental health and that’s something that is true even as more and more people come to understand the realities of it. A lot of people either pretend that mental health issues don’t exist or write them off as something that’s not really worth paying much attention to. However, the truth is that mental health issues can impact anyone and they can have a serious knock-on effect on the rest of your life. After all, as much as many of us know that living an active life is good for our health, someone suffering from depression simply may not have the capacity to get up and actually live that kind of lifestyle in the first place. That can often become a vicious cycle that just goes round and round forever. If you want to be able to take their best possible care of your health, you need to be sure that you’re taking care of every aspect of it, not just the physical side.
It’s common to try to turn to other people for advice and guidance when it comes to trying to improve yourself, whether this is your health or any other part of your life. However, you should never mistake listening to what other people have to say for definite expertise on your body, your health, and your experience. Even medical professionals aren’t able to completely understand your personal experience when it comes to your body and your health and you should feel confident enough to let them know the specifics of your experience so that they can do the best possible job of helping and supporting you in everything that you do.
