When you are affected by a long-term illness, whether it be a chronic physical illness or mental illness, it can make you feel like you have no control over your life. When one condition starts to take over, it can cause other aspects of your health to spiral out of control, until it gets to the point where your mind and body simply aren’t functioning well enough for you to be able to have a good quality of life. Therefore, it is important to find manageable and realistic ways to take control of your own health hand wellbeing, so that you can avoid feeling like a stranger in your own body. To assist you in finding somewhere to begin, here some tips to help you find ways to be a healthier and happier individual despite any chronic illnesses you might be affected by.
Take one step at a time
When you have medical conditions which are complex and not so easily managed, you can’t expect to be able to push yourself too far too fast or be able to find ways to improve everything all at once. You will be best off making a list of all of the ways how your conditions affect your lifestyle and then prioritize them in order of importance and what you would like to try and tackle first. That way you can stop yourself from feeling overwhelmed, while still making positive steps towards change.
You may want to start with something which you feel can be easily changed, or alternatively, you might want to begin with a change which will make the biggest impact on your life. Whatever you decide, make sure to get the support of a medical professional, to ensure that you aren’t doing anything which could exacerbate or worsen your medical conditions in any way. Most importantly, you need to remember to prioritize self-care, as while making life changes will be beneficial in the long run, the short-term effects can be difficult on your body, as well as your mental wellbeing.
Make small changes
There may be lots of small things which, while individually wouldn’t make a huge difference to your health, may accumulate to have a big impact on your health and wellbeing, and these are things which you may be able to tackle immediately. For example, if you smoke or drink alcohol to excess, this is going to have a huge impact on your wellbeing, simply because you are changing the chemical balance within your body through these habits. What you eat and drink also has a huge impact on your health; for instance, drinking too much caffeine, which is a stimulant, can make you irritable and cause a lot of stress on your body.
Eating too many high sugar foods and not getting enough vitamins and minerals in your diet can make your body lethargic, and result in you having too low energy levels for your body to complete simple tasks, such as digestion or complete cognitive exercises. You may even find that doing something as simple as getting enough sleep will help to improve your ability to function, as will finding ways to reduce pain, for example, look for pain doctors near me, as being in pain can make even the simplest tasks more difficult.
Learn more about your condition
If you have been living with medical conditions for a long time, you may feel like you know everything there is to know about it. However, the truth is that most people only learn enough to know how to manage their condition on a day to day basis, and there may be much more which you could learn to help you manage it better long term. The more that you can educate yourself, the more likely you are to find things which help you, and which will give you back a feeling of autonomy over your own body.
You could learn more by doing independent research, or by speaking to a doctor or other medical professional. Alternatively, you may find it useful to speak to others who are also affected by your condition and compare notes with them about what works when it comes to managing symptoms. It is something which you should try and do on a regular basis, as research is always changing, and by looking into your condition more often you may find that there is more information made available, or even more treatments discovered which can be used to manage it.
