Do you know about the hidden diseases of ageing?

Well, these are conditions or changes in our body that happen over time and there are simply are a result of our body slowly progressing in age and not repairing as quickly. It can come in a form of high blood pressure or low blood pressure, in forms of diabetes, heart disease risks or even things with cancer down the track as well.

It might sound a bit scary hearing all this, but what can we do about it?

First thing you can start with is creating an awareness around it. Now to build on this awareness, we want to check up on what you are doing, or we are doing individually about it. So to begin with, seeing your doctor or your physician, and seeing him on a 1 to 2 or 3 to 5 year basis.

There are different types of testing which are available. So to start with, if you’re looking at a heart disease, assessments or risks, generally they’re going to want to start with every two or three years with the blood pressure test and they will do this in line with cholesterol every three to five years. And also every two years, a heart disease testing will be done with the doctor as well. Other ones like oral care or a skin care, that can be done on a yearly basis which are obviously on the outside of our body.

Now this information is all well and good and we’ve got it. We know about it. The key is now to action it because the big thing about information is it will help us steer away from these conditions we are talking about.

But what tests is used for which disease, you might be thinking?

With heart disease, assessments or risks, so we’re talking our cholesterol ones, the high blood pressure testing and other ones that our doctors will be doing, there are going to revolve around things that will lead to things like angina, heart murmurs, heart failure, eventually stroke and heart attack and even things like hypo and hypertension with our blood pressure. So that is what those testings are generally related to.

For diabetes or a blood sugar test, they will probably end up using them together to find out if there is any risk of diabetes down the track. And the obvious ones like a skin testing will lead to skin cancer and our dental, probably something to do with our oral care as well.

Now we have all this information, we recommend making some changes. These changes are to create a healthy lifestyle and the changes are four fairly simple ones to start with.

 

• Quit smoking

Just rid of those little, little items that full of chemicals and toxins that just go into our body. Just remove them from life.

 

• Limiting the amount of alcohol

Now we know it is fantastic to have alcohol probably our lifestyle. Now we are not saying to remove it completely, just moderate and reduce accordingly.

 

• Be physically active.

This third point I love, the more active you are, the better your health is in the long term. The more you move, the more your machine is going to keep functioning well.

 

• Food as fuel

And our last one is the fuel we put in. So changing our “diet” or changing how our eating plan is. Now simple things we can start with is cook more from scratch. Reduce the amount of processed foods we’re consuming. Eat a wide variety of food particularly in a plant based, plant-based foods. There is lots of colours, lots of photo-chemicals in them. If you have a good variety of plant-based foods, it will start support your dietary intake.

 

Keep this information in the back of your mind when you go to see your doctor next and organise one or two of these assessments.