Preventive Health Care

It is a process of making small regular decisions and taking positive action on health, diet, relationships, exercise and lifestyle. These actions give your body the best chance of remaining free from disease. Optimal health is defined as a balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual and intellectual health. Preventive health is the science and art of helping people change their lifestyle to move toward a state of optimal health.

Medical research has come a long way, and as a result, people live much longer than they used to. While no one can argue that expanding the average person’s lifespan is good, many folks are not enjoying the quality of life that we would hope as they get older. Many of the elderly have chronic conditions that overwhelm their daily activities or they get diseases repeatedly, which ultimately raises health insurance premiums. Learning about and practicing preventive healthcare, i.e maintaining your body and good health throughout your entire lifetime, is properly the best method to prevent disease from happening in the first place.

• 17.3 million or 30% of total global deaths occur because of cardiovascular diseases In India FOUR people die of a Heart Attack every MINUTE
• FIVE out of 100 Indians carry a gene mutation that almost guarantees the development of heart disease. Diabetes kills TWO Indians while stroke and cancer kills ONE each every MINUTE
• In 2008, more than 35% Indians who died of a heart attack, cancer or diabetes were in their productive years (age 35-60)
• More than 61 Indians go below the poverty-line every MINUTE by spending on treatment to diseases already occurred
• For every 1000 Indians there is less than ONE hospital bed, less than ONE doctor and less than ONE nurse
• WHO indicates that at least 80% of premature deaths from cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes Interestingly, 40% of cancers are preventable if a healthy lifestyle is maintained and/or the conditions leading to the disease are DETECTED EARLY!

When you are sick, you have no choice but to think about your health; it’s right there in your face – you feel awful. Preventive health care must be planned and executed ahead of time, even when illness is absent. You must build healthy habits even when it’s not convenient. You must believe that maintaining a healthy lifestyle is important enough to make a few sacrifices. Eating right, getting exercise and avoiding destructive substances like tobacco, alcohol and excessive amounts of sugar and salt are crucial, as is getting enough sleep each night. Healthy habits are an “automatic” defense against most illnesses and can provide us a long, healthy – and thus happy – life.

Another Highly important aspect of preventive healthcare is finding and treating disease as soon as possible. Some sort of illness hits everyone eventually, but many, many diseases – when caught early – can be nipped in the bud and full health returned quickly. So it is important to become educated about illness and their symptoms, and what it takes to maintain good health overall. Moreover, it is also important to visit your doctor on a regular schedule – at least annually or possibly more often as you get older – in order to stay healthy and catch any disease early. If detected soon enough, a full cure is much more likely. It is also much more unlikely that most disease will become serious enough to negatively affect your lifestyle with debilitating symptoms or even loss of life.