Sometimes it is easy for us to just know when we are feeling sick or healthy. Our body has a very unique way of telling us what it needs. For example, if you have had a stressful couple of days, chances are that your body will keep telling you to take a break and get a good and restful night of sleep in the form of making you feel groggy, irritated and tired. If we do not make a point of listening well to our body on a regular basis, it manifests in the form of us getting sick.
While getting sick is an extreme case scenario here, there are a few ways through which you can regularly and quite effectively assess the health of your body on a periodic basis. It is important to engage in these self assessments frequently to catch any abnormalities in your health timely which may prove to be of a grave nature in the future. We have carefully curated a list of simple methods to help you do that with minimal to no equipment to be used in some cases. If you would like to know more about these methods, then all you have to do is to just keep on reading!
- Keep A Check On Your Breathing:
One of the simplest ways that you can test your health and fitness levels is by just paying close attention to your breathing and what makes you go out of breath easily. For example, a common standard in such a case will be that you are able to run up a flight of stairs or walk briskly for a few minutes without experiencing any kind of breathlessness. You can also take the help of a pulse oximeter on a regular basis to keep a check on the oxygen levels in your body. If you are able to do all this without needing to immediately rest in order to catch your breath, you can consider yourself to be quite healthy.
- Check Your Sleep Cycle:
Sleeping is one of the best ways to rest your body. But apart from doing that, analyzing your regular sleeping and waking cycle on a daily basis can tell you a whole lot about the health of your body. Keeping a sleep cycle journal can also aid you in recording any patterns which regularly repeat with you during certain times of the month. The things to keep a close check on are: do you get an uninterrupted and a restful sleep every night? Do you keep waking up in the middle of the night and if so, how many times? All this information can point you towards a health problem which probably needs attention.
- Study Your Eating Habits:
Apart from focusing on your sleep, it will do you good to keep an eye on your eating habits as well. We are not asking you to immediately cut off things from your diet, but instead just sit back and observe the kinds of foods which you crave during certain times of the day. You can also ask yourself leading questions like how often do you eat food and what do you eat in each meal. For example, if you tend to eat a lot of sugary foods, it may point towards a deficiency that you need to get checked by a medical professional.
- Use Healthcare Devices:
The most obvious yet overlooked point on this list is definitely this one. Using a healthcare device like a blood pressure monitor or a blood glucose meter is a great way to stay on top of your health without putting in a lot of effort from your side. Investing in good quality healthcare machines and making it a point to use them on a regular basis can make all the difference to your overall health and wellness. Apart from using such devices, you should also encourage other members of your family to do the same as well. This is especially helpful in detecting the onset of certain diseases before they can cause significant damage.
- Pay Attention To Body Fat:
While we do not consider body mass index or BMI, as it is often referred to, as a good parameter of health, it can tell you a lot about your body. In addition to taking that into account, you can also take the help of a body fat analyser to figure out the proportion of body fat that you have and which you need to lose to be able to optimize your health and wellness in the long term. You can also cut some extremely unhealthy junk food from your diet. This can help to shed off the extra kilos and make you feel fitter as well as much more agile.
- Study Your Mood Fluctuations:
If you are somebody who feels like they just can not get a hold on their mood despite everything that they have tried, you need to pay attention to your health. Irrational and sudden mood swings can be caused due to an imbalance in your hormones or if you are suffering from deficiencies of certain vitamins and minerals. If you believe that this tends to occur way too often then you definitely need to get yourself checked from your doctor as this can point towards something way more serious health wise.
- Research About Diseases Running In Your Family:
If there is a history of a certain disease which runs in your family cutting through generations, then you are highly susceptible to suffering from it as well. While this may not be an instant case of causing panic, you may want to gather all kinds of information that you can get on this disease. This can help you to take certain preventive measures to avoid it as well as stay ready for whenever it does come to strike you.
Becoming more cognisant of one’s health is an extremely important thing to do. If you stay on top of your health at all times, the chances of any medical surprises and shocks plaguing you may be reduced by a lot. We hope that this article was able to help you in a way so that you are able to assess your health in a proper manner.