Four Mistakes Most People Make Regarding Their Health
NOT DOING THEIR RESEARCH
With the accessibility of the internet, it has been much easier to find valuable health, fitness, and nutritional information. There is no reason to not take advantage of this when it comes to managing your own health. Health professionals do not always have time to keep up on the latest studies. This is why it’s important to know how to do your own research. Learning the science is important if you want to avoid misinformation. The internet is full of bad health advice. Magazines are full of bad health advice. Television is full of bad health advice. When you are doing research, it is vital that you know how to tell a good source from a bad one. People fail at dieting all the time because they follow bad advice from the internet, or from people they know who “mean well.” Some are even health practitioners! The best source of information is peer reviewed studies. These are widely accepted and reliable by the medical industry. When viewing a study, it’s important to note the sample size (how many people were involved in the study), and the control group (the group of people who participated in the study, but took a placebo or did not otherwise partake in anything concerning the study. They just existed to show baseline data).
BLINDLY BELIEVING EVERYTHING THEIR DOCTOR TELLS THEM
People who do not ask questions, and blindly believe whatever their doctor tells them are uninformed patients. It is important to ask as many questions as you can to avoid confusion. While doctors mean well, they do sometimes make mistakes. This is why people seek out second opinions before making important, life-changing medical decisions. While it is important to find a doctor you trust, it is equally important to do your own research and bring any concerning information you find to your doctor for clarification. As mentioned above, you want to use reliable sources like medical studies, and not a blog like this one! ALWAYS fact check!
WAITING UNTIL SOMETHING GOES WRONG BEFORE TAKING CONTROL OF THEIR OWN HEALTH
Whenever you wait until something goes wrong, you are already behind the eight ball. DO NOT DO THIS!!! Just imagine if you got a diagnosis for advanced stage cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. Now, imagine that you could have done something about it sooner to avoid the uphill battle you will now face due to neglecting your health. Disease does not happen overnight. Disease happens due to lifestyle choices and environmental factors. If you knew this was causing health problems, you would have changed something, right? Nobody wants to be sick and tired all of the time. If you are living a healthy lifestyle and something goes wrong, you have more time to take corrective action than if you waited until your symptoms are severe. Symptoms are the body’s way of sending an alert that something is wrong. Symptoms should never be ignored.
ALWAYS THINKING THAT EVERYTHING IS OKAY
If you ask people, most of them will say that they are “already eating healthy” or “already living a healthy lifestyle.” I hear this all the time, and then when I see some of their lifestyle choices, I know that this is simply not true. They, however, think they are doing okay even though they just walked out of the bakery or fast-food restaurant for the third time this week. Many people think they are already living a healthy lifestyle when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. They are perplexed as to why they are always tired, or have unexplained aches and pains. They might even be doing a lot of things right. But, the truth is… there is always a trigger for disease. It is usually not just one thing, but a combination of things that caused your “toxic bucket” to overflow. We are constantly exposed to toxins in the air, water, soil, food, personal care products, workplace, home, and school. Toxins are accumulative. We must always be proactive about keeping as many toxins out as we can. It is time to drain the bucket. “Draining the bucket” is something that needs to be done periodically, but that is a topic for another blog.