What You Can Do to Maintain Your Health
Do my habits absolutely affect my health?
Very abundant so. All of the above causes of afterlife (such as cancer, affection disease, stroke, lung ache and injury) can be prevented by your affairs and the choices you make.
Don't smoke or use tobacco.
Smoking and application tobacco are actual alarming habits. Smoker causes 440,000 deaths in the United States every year. Added preventable illnesses (such as emphysema, mouth, throat and lung blight and affection disease) are acquired by tobacco use than by annihilation else. The eventually you quit, the better.
Limit how abundant booze you drink.
This agency no added than 2 drinks a day for men and 1 booze a day for women. One booze is according to 1 can of beer (12 ounces), a 4-ounce bottle of wine or a accoutrement (1 ounce) of liquor.
Too abundant booze can accident the alarmist and accord to some cancers, such as throat and alarmist cancer. Booze aswell contributes to deaths from car wrecks, murders and suicides.
Eat healthy.
A advantageous diet has abounding bloom benefits. Affection disease, assertive cancers, stroke, diabetes and accident to your arteries can be affiliated to what you eat. By authoritative convalescent aliment choices, you can aswell lower your cholesterol and lose weight.
Lose weight if you're overweight.
Many Americans are overweight. Carrying too abundant weight increases your accident for top claret pressure, top cholesterol, diabetes, affection disease, stroke, assertive cancers, gallbladder ache and arthritis in the weight-bearing joints (such as the spine, achievement or knees). A high-fiber, low-fat diet and approved exercise can advice you lose weight and accumulate it off.
Exercise.
Exercise can advice anticipate affection disease, top claret pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis and depression. It can aswell advice anticipate colon cancer, achievement and aback injury. You'll feel bigger and accumulate your weight beneath ascendancy if you exercise regularly. Try to exercise for 30 to 60 minutes, 4 to 6 times a week, but bethink that any bulk of exercise is bigger than none.
Don't insolate or use tanning booths.
Sun acknowledgment is affiliated to derma cancer, which is the a lot of accepted blazon of blight in the United States. It's best to absolute sun acknowledgment and abrasion careful accouterment and hats if you are outside. Sunscreen is aswell actual important. It protects your derma and will advice anticipate derma cancer. Accomplish abiding you use sunscreen year annular on apparent derma (such as your face and hands). Choose a broad-spectrum sunscreen with at atomic an SPF of 15 and one that blocks both UVA and UVB light.
Practice safe sex.
The safest sex is amid 2 humans who are alone accepting sex with anniversary added and who don't accept a sexually transmitted infection (STI) or allotment all-overs to inject drugs.
Use acrylic condoms and a spermicide (a artefact that kills sperm) gel or cream. Talk with your doctor about accepting activated year for STIs.
Control your cholesterol level.
If your cholesterol akin is high, accumulate it down by bistro adapted and by exercising. You can aswell abatement your cholesterol akin by attached how abundant cholesterol you eat and by abandonment smoking.
Control top claret pressure.
High claret burden increases your accident for affection disease, achievement and branch disease. To ascendancy it, lose weight, exercise, eat beneath sodium, booze beneath alcohol, don't smoke and yield anesthetic if your doctor prescribes it.
Keep your shots up to date.
Adults charge a tetanus-diphtheria booster every 10 years. Your doctor may acting one Td booster with Tdap, which protects you adjoin pertussis (whooping cough). You should aswell get a flu attempt anniversary year. Ask your doctor if you charge added shots or vaccines.
Check your breasts.
Breast blight is the additional a lot of accepted could cause of afterlife for women. Accept your doctor analysis your breasts every 1 to 2 years until you're 40. After age 40, you should accept a annual analytic assay and a mammogram.
Get approved Pap smears.
Cancer of the cervix in women can be detected by approved Pap smears. Start accepting them if you activate accepting sex or by age 18. You'll charge them already a year at first, until you've had at atomic 3 accustomed Pap tests. After this, you should accept them at atomic every 3 years.
Ask your doctor about added blight screenings.
Adults over age 50 should ask their doctor about accepting arrested for colorectal cancer. Men over age 50 should altercate with their doctor the risks and allowances of accepting buried for prostate cancer.
Should I accept a annual physical?
Health screenings are replacing the annual physical. Instead of every being accepting the aforementioned exams and tests, alone the adapted ones are given. Talk to your ancestors doctor about your accident factors and what tests and exams are adapted for you.