Equip Yourself with the Tools to Stay Healthy
If your body were a house, what kind of house would it be? An elegant, well-maintained ranch-style home? A split-level ranch that’s been placed on a murky foundation? A one-room shack full of holes in the roof?
Whatever it is, you want a house that’s comfortable and clean. You want to make sure that you can handle the upkeep on the house. Because if you can’t, the roof might come crashing down one day without any warning. You need the proper tools to stay healthy. You can’t do it with no supplies and no guidebook. It’s like a welder doing his work without any protective equipment: Someone is likely to get burned. Here’s some tools to stay healthy.
Your health insurance
One of the biggest indicators of someone’s overall health is whether or not they have health insurance. There’s a reason that the Affordable Care Act, for all its flaws, has led to generally better outcomes for people who were able to obtain insurance after it passed. America pretty much requires health insurance if you don’t want to go bankrupt due to medical bills. And even that’s no guarantee; there are still plenty of people faced with catastrophic medical emergencies who must raise money through crowdfunding sites just to get by.
So health insurance matters. You’re more likely to get the preventative care you need if you have decent health insurance, and preventative care is absolutely essential to ensuring you catch small issues before they come huge. Think of it like a stain in the wall that seems to gradually getting bigger. If you don’t address it, you’re going to need to repair the whole wall eventually, which is more expensive and painful.
People of a certain age who have Medicare are generally pretty happy with their coverage, but there are still some gaps that usually need filling. Medicare Supplement Plan G is a popular option, as is Plan F. Don’t try to get Plan Z, though, since that doesn’t exist (at least not yet). Supplemental plans are like adding an extra room to your house: you may not have to have it, but it makes the house a nicer place to live.
Stay active
Other tools you’ll need to stay healthy include things like running shoes, workout clothes, and a key fob that gets you into your local fitness club. Americans need exercise like never before; we’ve become too dependent on cars to get us around. In many cases, people who don’t have to walk or bike places like work or the grocery store will just stay sedentary. No one is saying you have to complete a marathon (although you can certainly make that a goal of yours if you want), but make sure to get out and get moving. A walk around the neighborhood is great; a jog around the neighborhood is even better.
Don’t set goals that you can’t attain, but do make sure to set goals. Even if you work a job that requires some physical labor, like a manufacturing engineer for example, it’s still important to make sure you’re getting regular exercise as a preventative measure. Exercise is known to improve your quality of sleep, and it may even offer benefits for your love life. Physical fitness is one of the first things to go when someone is trying to juggle a busy schedule, but it should really be one of your top priorities. It’s not always easy to make time for exercise, but you’ll almost certainly feel better after you do.
