We can check our financial health easily. We know where we stand with our employers. Our families members can generally tell us how our relationships with them are doing. Even so, our health is one of the most complicated aspects of our lives to measure.
In movies and television we often see protagonists stand before the mirror and flex their muscles, as if that were the metric by which we should gauge our health. Unfortunately, the diameter of your muscles isn’t enough to determine your true health.
However, thanks to technology, these days we can learn more about what’s going on inside our bodies than ever before.
Facts and Figures
Hypertension, better known as high blood pressure, is often referred to as “the silent killer.” That’s because many people who suffer from it have no idea that they have high blood pressure. As a result, they fail to treat it until it triggers more obvious events like heart attacks and strokes.
Plenty of other conditions can lurk beneath the surface, slowly eroding your health even as you seem to feel fine. Conditions like diabetes, cancer, and artherosclerosis can be wreaking havoc on your future even though you feel fine, or at most, have a diffuse group of odd symptoms that you ignore.
So just because you don’t notice anything unusual doesn’t mean that something serious can’t be afoot.
Getting to the doctor for annual physicals is key. That means going at a time when you aren’t sick and just having your practitioner give you the age-relevant rundown of what you should be checking on. Then, you must take the initiative to get the necessary tests and check-ups.
Are We Taking the Right Medications?
And while we’re debunking the old ways of monitoring our health, let’s not forget the knee-jerk move to request prescription medication from our doctors the moment we feel run-down.
There was a time when the math of health went something like this:
Condition + Medication = Recovery
But that equation has gotten muddier in recent years. Drugs have side effects. Medications can interact with each other or generate new health problems.
The surest way to avoid a negative side effect from your treatment is to submit to prescription drug testing by health professionals who can accurately determine the medication levels in your body. This can also help you and your doctor develop a personalized treatment plan.
Remember that many drugs, particularly antibiotics, linger inside your body long after you have gulped the last pill. Certain steps can help you clear many toxins from your body, but medications are harder to resolve.
So if the condition for which you’ve taken that medicine is persisting even as the drug remains active in your body, it’s clear that you need to try a new strategy.
Obviously that’s not necessary with every pesky cold or nagging cough. But when more serious conditions exist, like major infections or organ malfunctions, it’s critical that you know if your current prescription isn’t cutting the mustard.
And your doctor should know too.
Speaking of things your doctor should know, interactions are critical events as well. If you continue to show significant levels of a drug you finished weeks or even months ago–and yes, they can hang around that long–your doctor needs to know that before providing you with a new medication.
That information is more important if the leftover medication was prescribed by someone else.
Regardless of the circumstances, identifying medication residues can direct us to use a different medication or consider nutritional or other treatments for new conditions.