By Maria Jauhar, M.D.
You’ll know you’ve found the right physician when you feel they are helping you become an authority on your own health. Your awareness is the beginning of a life without fear of losing your positive outlook, your independence and your ability to enjoy the things that mean most to you.
Preventive medicine is a partnership between you and a trusted physician, based on understanding your unique health characteristics and on sharing those understandings.
Knowing where you came from.
It’s important to share your family health history with your physician. Heredity isn’t a life sentence; people overcome what they’re born with all the time. But knowing your family health history can give you a lot better idea of what to keep your eye on. In fact, some of the biggest threats to our health – heart disease, cancer, diabetes – all have an hereditary component.
It’s what we do with our heredity that counts.
The choices we make in our own habits, environment and behavior can help change our family history for the better. Exercise, diet, rest, and stress management skills form the rest of our destiny, and they are the health factors we can influence.
Lightening up.
Overall quality of life improves for many people when they lose weight. Our energy, sleep patterns, mood, and stress levels all improve when we find and reach the weight that is right for us.
For as many as one-third of Americans, obesity is a threat to health that brings with it a host of other hazards, including high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep apnea, and cardiovascular disease.
Physician-supervised medical weight loss programs are designed individually for each patient. They take into consideration lifestyle factors and existing conditions to create the most productive path for healthy weight loss. Food has been called the most basic tool in preventive health care, and your physician can help you make a plan that works for you.
Knowing what not to do.
Some lifestyle improvements – like quitting smoking – are obvious. Often, though, they are surprisingly hard to change without help. Your physician could be the key that completes what you need, to make those changes that have been on your mind, but beyond your grasp.
Other health factors to avoid are more subtle and individual. Your physician’s training and perspective can help you discover those do’s and don’ts that apply particularly to you. Annual or semi-annual exams give both you and your physician a strong foundation for knowing what to watch for and how to stay headed in the right direction.
On top of your game.
Preventing disease calls for anticipating what we need to do, because disease is a dynamic process that begins before we are aware of it – unless we take steps to tune up our awareness.
So preventive medicine – teaming up with a physician you trust – can be the beginning of a life that is happier, more bountiful than you might have imagined until now.
