How to Choose Your Health Goals for 2019

Health goals

When choosing your health goals for 2019, incorporate the power of the popular acronym, SMART: Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound. By defining your health goals within these perimeters, you are better able to plan for and achieve long-term success. True wellness is much more than just physical health. Ask yourself how you are doing in areas that affect your overall health. Consider the big ones first:  career health, stress, sleep management, and financial stability.

ENGAGE in your wellness by first identifying what your area of your wellness is your weakest link. Then simply start and start simply, working on one thing until you see improvement and then moving on to the next.  Not sure what you should focus on in 2019? A functional medicine consultation with a member of our Balanced Well-Being Healthcare team can help you discover what area to focus on first.

Work Health and How it Can Affect You Physically

Work environments can be healthy and unhealthy. A healthy work environment can provide you with social relationships, identity, personal growth and financial security. But other work-related issues can lead to serious health problems through injury and other psychosocial risks. What does your work environment do for your health? If you recognize areas that are destructive or unhealthy, what can you do to change those?

Stress and Your Health

The American Heart Association is engaged in researching how stress affects your heart, and has shown how stress can affect behaviors and factors that increase your risk for heart disease–the leading cause of death in America.

How you handle the stress in your life greatly determines how healthy your heart remains.  Some people choose to turn to alcohol, smoking, overeating and other negative options to cope with the stresses they feel. But, these habits can increase blood pressure and damage artery walls. High blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, smoking, and physical inactivity are some of the leading causes for heart disease.

Ask yourself, how am I managing the stress–both positive and negative–in my life?

Sleep Management and Health

Sleep is an essential component to achieving and maintaining optimum health and wellness. It sustains and protects mental, physical and emotional health in children and teens, and is crucial for growth and development.

Getting adequate sleep reduces healing time for injuries and ailments. Not getting enough of it puts you at higher risk for chronic health problems and illnesses. Sleep deficiency has been shown to cause above-average blood sugar levels, increasing the risk of prediabetes and diabetes, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. While your body rests it rebuilds muscle mass and repairs cells and tissues.  Your hormones will also regulate better encouraging a more healthy, properly-functioning body.

Do you often wake feeling unrested? You may have an undiagnosed sleep disorder. Find out what you can do to see if you can achieve better rest to support your overall health.

Financial Stability and Health Impacts

“The US National Center for Health Statistics calls the association between health and socioeconomic factors such as income and education “well established,”said Business Insider.

Why is this? Not only is less stress present when you are financially stable, but having sufficient income to meet your needs usually translates to purchasing healthier, sometimes more costly, foods and not skipping needed trips to the doctor for ongoing services.

Health Indicators

When establishing where to start with your SMART goals, start with analyzing where you fall with certain baseline health indicators. Wondering where you stack up compared to the nation? Consider the following.

The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Prevention (ODPHP), recently released its Midcourse Review, an overview of the status of Healthy People 2020 objectives in the first half of the decade.  This review describes progress with labels like: improving, little or no detectable change, target met or exceeded or getting worse.

The areas that are getting worse include:

  • Mental Health and Mental Disorders
  • Oral Health

Areas with no detectable change included:

  • Access to Health Services
  • Diabetes
  • Family Planning
  • Nutrition and Weight Status (Specifically, mean daily intake of vegetables and  obesity among children and adults)
  • Substance abuse

For many of us, these weaker areas can be changed by us proactively choosing to make changes. But, often we need a little help. This is where Balanced Well-Being Healthcare comes in to play.

Get Your Data with In-Office Lab Work and Testing

One of the best ways you can effectively approach improving your health and wellness is to get some real data on YOU. Responsible self-care requires that you take the necessary steps to know more about yourself than anyone else. One of the tools we offer our patients for this process is our Health Screening.

We are passionate about getting all our patients screened.  Of 1,000 patients screened, we found that more than 75% had suboptimal Vitamin D levels, 75% had blood sugar imbalance, 50% had B vitamin deficiencies, and 50% had increased risk of heart disease. We found 5% with gluten intolerance and celiac disease.  We found 5% with autoimmune thyroid disease. With numbers like these, you would think that there would be indicators, but the fact remains that most of these patients had NO symptoms.

Call for a Health Consultation

Discover your biomarkers for unwellness with an in-office health screening. Call  970-631-8286 and discover how healthy you are on a biochemical, molecular level. Learn strategies and tips to balance your body physically, mentally and emotionally so you can have what you need for total body wellness.