This week’s Thrive in Five is inspired by an incident that my partner had in the doctor’s a couple of weeks ago. She went down there to have a standard test done, and she recently turned 47, and the nurse said to her, “Wow, it’s amazing that you’re not on any medication, most women of your age are.”
And Antonia was really struck by this, as am I, and thought, that’s a really strange thing to say. I mean, 47 is not old. Certainly not a sort of age we should be starting to think about medication. And it really got us thinking that this nurse must see hundreds of people across a week coming into her practise, and possibly lots of them are on medication. It really sort of struck us as, “God what a testimony to the state of our health.”
What I want to talk about this week is about prevention, not cure. So how can you avoid medication, or avoid health issues for as long as you possibly can? The whole idea of health span not life span – really staying well and staying healthy for as long as you can.
There are six areas of health I think we should focus on, which you probably have heard me speak about before – and we call these the Six Signals:
sleep, mental health, energy, body composition, digestive health and fitness.
We have lots of content about those six signals on our website here: https://www.bodyshotperformance.com/bodyshot-for-healthspan/six-signals/
Or you can use the top right search bar (in the menu) and type in sleep, or mental health, or energy, or any of the other signals, and it will pull out all the relevant content on how to improve and optimise, and ultimately stay well for as long as you possibly can.
But the main essence of this message is simply to start thinking about prevention rather than cure.
Rather than looking for issues to solve, try and avoid them happening in the first place. You can also marry this into the workplace – what preventative measures could you implement for you or your team if you’re a leader as well as yourself at a personal level.
If we make that our main focus to stay well for as long as we can, I think we’re all going to enjoy longer, happier, more productive and fruitful lives, and ultimately have the energy to do all the things we want to do in life. So a simple little message, prevention rather than cure. What changes can you make today and ongoing to ensure that you stay really fit and well, or to improve your fitness and your overall wellbeing so ultimately you get more out of life.
What’s Your Health IQ?
Discover what your Health IQ score is based on the Six Signals™: sleep, mental health, body composition, energy, digestion and physical fitness. Our simple diagnostic tool will help you understand where you should prioritise your efforts.
