Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-IV
Welcome to our health & self help blog.
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Tuesday, 8-22-2006
Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part IV
Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.
And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)
In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.
For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006; Friday, 8-18-2006; & Monday, 8-21-2006.
5. Follow these good health generating & health protecting guidelines.:
i) If you possibly can, get your key health indicators & blood tests done.
Then, if any are in the danger range or even if they are out of the desirable range, take appropriate action to move them to the desirable range or as close to it as you can.
Then get them redone to see how much progress you’ve made in about 2 or 3 months.
Once they are in the desirable range or as close to it as you can get them, get the tests every year if you can.
As you have seen if you’ve been reading our blog, almost all these guidelines & many of the posts here have actions you can take that move all these measures in the desirable direction.
So, even if you can’t get tested or do it as often as you like, you may well get most of the desirable effects by following the other guidelines.
However, it’s extremely desirable to get them done if you can.
To some extent taking control of your health without them is like driving without looking out the windshield.
And, you can drive off the road or into a post if you can’t tell it’s happening.
When you do get tested, you may well find some measures where you are well out of the desirable area & on the border of the dangerous area.
Some of you may even find you are already in the danger area on that measure.
If that happens, see a doctor to get treatment.
The right drugs do work. They usually work quite quickly.
And, they may well save your life while you are adding the other things you need to get out of danger.
Then, if you do enough for a long enough period of time, you’ll be able to stop the drugs or reduce the dose in many cases.
And, you & your doctor will be able to tell when & if that’s the case
once you are retested.
As you may have seen on our recent post on ways to raise your desirable & protective HDL cholesterol, there are things you can do with what you eat & don’t eat; the kind of exercise you get; & supplements you can take that do that.
This is true of each of these measures.
And, if you are in the danger zone in any, these actions are extremely important to add to the drugs your doctor will likely prescribe to move quickly & completely out of the danger zone. And, to keep you in the safe zone & protect your health the most, you should keep doing these things.
In addition, the experts in the related specialties & in preventive medicine are beginning to educate doctors that this is desirable.
And, that if one measure is in the danger zone, your patient’s health depends on making sure you test the others because previous bad life style choices tend to move several in the wrong direction at the same time.
This is a huge & rapidly developing subject as new research is done & new effective methods are found.
So, today, I’ll simply list some of the most important things to have tested.
In other posts, we’ll cover more in this area.
And, we plan to set up a paid service in this area later to help individual people & interested health professionals keep up with this field.
Here’s the list:
*Total cholesterol. And, of more importance, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, high sensitivity C Reactive protein, & homocysteine.
Taken together, these are a good initial reading on heart disease risk.
And, if you have heart related symptoms or are in the danger zone on these – or have more money to learn more, there’s another level or two of diagnostic & heart related measures.
Two other tests to consider are: Lp(a); & a treadmill test if your doctors think it safe for you to do.
(If you exercise regularly & have kept your basic measures listed above out of the danger zone, a treadmill test should be safe. And, there’s an excellent chance you’ll do well on it. And, if you do, that’s very predictive of few heart problems later or at least having any soon.)
Homocysteine is a heart & circulation risk when it’s high. AND, it tends to speed your rate of aging when it’s high.
Fasting blood glucose & HBA1C.
These test for type II diabetes or trends in that direction.
Here again, there are other tests; such as for insulin levels & to see how your body reacts in your blood glucose levels after a normal meal or after a measured dose of glucose.
But, the main two are a good place to start.
Blood pressure in both arms.
Unless it’s so high, it’s in danger of killing you that day, there are very few symptoms of high blood pressure.
So, you don’t know what it is unless you get it measured.
Having high blood pressure increases your risk of heart disease & stroke & kidney disease. And, it can be indicative of heart disease or type II diabetes as they can be part of the cause of high blood pressure.
Also, if your blood pressure is more than 10 percent different between your two arms, it can be indicative of problems.
*************
Also, you can add how well you are following or not following the previous list of guidelines to your test results to get a good picture of your future health.
For example: Someone who is a bit above the desirable zone on these tests & is somewhat fat will AND who exercises regularly, will often do better than a skinny or normal weight person with those measures now but who never exercises.
We’ll post more of these health guidelines in our next post.)
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Tuesday, 8-22-2006
Guidelines to Good Health, Survival, & Longevity-part IV
Following these guidelines helps you to have a good quality of life mostly unhampered by getting sick or disabled or spending a lot on drugs, doctors & hospitals.
And, it means you’ll have that quality of life for many years longer than many of the people who don’t follow these guidelines will live. (Your quality of life may be good into your nineties or beyond while people who follow none of these guidelines often die before age 80 – & many even earlier.)
In addition, as you get older, you’ll gradually find you look years younger than other people your age.
For the previous guidelines in this series, see the posts for Thursday, 8-17-2006; Friday, 8-18-2006; & Monday, 8-21-2006.
5. Follow these good health generating & health protecting guidelines.:
i) If you possibly can, get your key health indicators & blood tests done.
Then, if any are in the danger range or even if they are out of the desirable range, take appropriate action to move them to the desirable range or as close to it as you can.
Then get them redone to see how much progress you’ve made in about 2 or 3 months.
Once they are in the desirable range or as close to it as you can get them, get the tests every year if you can.
As you have seen if you’ve been reading our blog, almost all these guidelines & many of the posts here have actions you can take that move all these measures in the desirable direction.
So, even if you can’t get tested or do it as often as you like, you may well get most of the desirable effects by following the other guidelines.
However, it’s extremely desirable to get them done if you can.
To some extent taking control of your health without them is like driving without looking out the windshield.
And, you can drive off the road or into a post if you can’t tell it’s happening.
When you do get tested, you may well find some measures where you are well out of the desirable area & on the border of the dangerous area.
Some of you may even find you are already in the danger area on that measure.
If that happens, see a doctor to get treatment.
The right drugs do work. They usually work quite quickly.
And, they may well save your life while you are adding the other things you need to get out of danger.
Then, if you do enough for a long enough period of time, you’ll be able to stop the drugs or reduce the dose in many cases.
And, you & your doctor will be able to tell when & if that’s the case
once you are retested.
As you may have seen on our recent post on ways to raise your desirable & protective HDL cholesterol, there are things you can do with what you eat & don’t eat; the kind of exercise you get; & supplements you can take that do that.
This is true of each of these measures.
And, if you are in the danger zone in any, these actions are extremely important to add to the drugs your doctor will likely prescribe to move quickly & completely out of the danger zone. And, to keep you in the safe zone & protect your health the most, you should keep doing these things.
In addition, the experts in the related specialties & in preventive medicine are beginning to educate doctors that this is desirable.
And, that if one measure is in the danger zone, your patient’s health depends on making sure you test the others because previous bad life style choices tend to move several in the wrong direction at the same time.
This is a huge & rapidly developing subject as new research is done & new effective methods are found.
So, today, I’ll simply list some of the most important things to have tested.
In other posts, we’ll cover more in this area.
And, we plan to set up a paid service in this area later to help individual people & interested health professionals keep up with this field.
Here’s the list:
*Total cholesterol. And, of more importance, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, high sensitivity C Reactive protein, & homocysteine.
Taken together, these are a good initial reading on heart disease risk.
And, if you have heart related symptoms or are in the danger zone on these – or have more money to learn more, there’s another level or two of diagnostic & heart related measures.
Two other tests to consider are: Lp(a); & a treadmill test if your doctors think it safe for you to do.
(If you exercise regularly & have kept your basic measures listed above out of the danger zone, a treadmill test should be safe. And, there’s an excellent chance you’ll do well on it. And, if you do, that’s very predictive of few heart problems later or at least having any soon.)
Homocysteine is a heart & circulation risk when it’s high. AND, it tends to speed your rate of aging when it’s high.
Fasting blood glucose & HBA1C.
These test for type II diabetes or trends in that direction.
Here again, there are other tests; such as for insulin levels & to see how your body reacts in your blood glucose levels after a normal meal or after a measured dose of glucose.
But, the main two are a good place to start.
Blood pressure in both arms.
Unless it’s so high, it’s in danger of killing you that day, there are very few symptoms of high blood pressure.
So, you don’t know what it is unless you get it measured.
Having high blood pressure increases your risk of heart disease & stroke & kidney disease. And, it can be indicative of heart disease or type II diabetes as they can be part of the cause of high blood pressure.
Also, if your blood pressure is more than 10 percent different between your two arms, it can be indicative of problems.
*************
Also, you can add how well you are following or not following the previous list of guidelines to your test results to get a good picture of your future health.
For example: Someone who is a bit above the desirable zone on these tests & is somewhat fat will AND who exercises regularly, will often do better than a skinny or normal weight person with those measures now but who never exercises.
We’ll post more of these health guidelines in our next post.)
posted by David at 1:22 PM
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