Do You Have a Preventive Healthcare Plan in Place?
Our current healthcare model is flawed when it comes to preventive healthcare. Should you break a leg, come down with pneumonia, or be diagnosed with cancer, the current healthcare model is ready and waiting for you. Preventive healthcare is about being proactive to maintain optimal health, which in the long run, saves time and money. Examinations, vaccines, annual lab work, mammograms, and colonoscopies are all examples of a preventive approach to healthcare. The four horsemen of chronic disease states, Alzheimer's Disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, need a more proactive preventive approach than what’s already in place for most humankind. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to the education that’s needed in order to become a proactive health advocate for themselves. If you don’t know what’s missing, or what’s needed, in order to avoid chronic disease states, it’s almost impossible to be proactively preventive in your health journey.
Tips for a Preventive Healthcare Approach
Preventive healthcare starts with a healthy lifestyle. Optimizing lifestyle interventions, such as nutrition, sleep, exercise, and stress management are always the first lines of defense. After that foundation has been built, the next steps may help you monitor your health from a preventive healthcare model approach.
1. Build your preventive healthcare team, which may include a health coach, fitness trainer, psychologist, nutritionist, or dietician. Making lifestyle changes can be challenging and having the guidance of a professional is a great place to start. Use the links below to start your journey:
To find a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach, go here.
To find a fitness trainer in your area, go here.
To find a licensed professional in your area, refer to your in-network health insurance provider.
2. Choose your doctor carefully. Try and find an integrative doctor within your health insurance policy first. This is often very challenging. Using the terms, “integrative”, “functional medicine”, and “holistic” may improve your search. These types of medical doctors combine a root-cause approach with comprehensive lab testing and screening protocols. Finding a doctor like this outside of a health insurance policy will be considered cash-pay, or out-of-pocket, and they are much easier to find in private practice. Working with a health coach can be an efficient way to be referred to a functional medicine doctor who would be a good match for your needs.
Learn what questions to ask your potential doctor to make sure that she/he is a good match for you here.
3. Become your own health advocate. While you and your doctor may have a wonderful bond and mutual respect for each other, you must be able to advocate for yourself and be heard. Learning what labs to ask for and not relying solely on your doctor’s suggestions is your responsibility. Asking for comprehensive lab tests to get a deeper look at your full health story is crucial to preventing disease. Get comfortable calling your health insurance company to find out what labs are covered and what is not and the associated costs- don’t get a surprise bill for thousands of dollars.
Some examples of comprehensive labs may include asking for a lipid panel that goes beyond the standard panel, which includes: total cholesterol, HDL-C, LDL-C, and triglycerides. Adding labs that look at markers for inflammation, genetics and particle size associated with cardiovascular disease risk is crucial. Another example is asking for a comprehensive thyroid panel. Most conventional doctors look at TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) only, or TSH and T4 only. This is highly incomplete and tells you very little about the health of your thyroid. The list goes on and on. Educate yourself by listening to health-related podcasts, such as The Health Trip, work with a health coach who can help guide you, utilize medical journals, and the PubMed database.
4. Stay up-to-date on your preventive health protocol. None of the above will work unless you are willing to do the work. It’s estimated that people spend 8 hours per month scheduling medical appointments.
Create an online folder with all of your medical records.
Make sure to bookmark your login page for each medical portal on your computer.
Note your medical appointments on your phone, or in your paper calendar, including alarms to call and schedule future appointments. Some offices charge a missed or canceled appointment.
The goal of preventive healthcare is to prevent disease, disability, and death.
Get started on your health journey now.
This blog is not to be used as medical advice or for making any lifestyle changes to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.