When you know your BMI, you can start making choices to improve your health. Small changes can directly affect your current health and greatly reduce the development of future disease.
Get active. Regular physical activity can help you control your weight, reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, reduce the risk of some cancers, strengthen bones and muscles and increase the chances of living longer. It only takes small steps and you can keep it simple. Start by walking your dog around your neighborhood or park your car farther away at the mall. Try walking up and down your stairs or some other low impact activities. You don't have to go out and buy exercise equipment or join a gym, just come up with a strategy to increase daily physical exercise.
Stop smoking. Want multiple benefits for giving up one activity? Controlling smoking, just like controlling your weight, is a small step that can directly affect your health immediately. We all know that cigarette smoking is bad for us, but did you know it's the leading cause of preventable death? Smoking greatly increases your chance of heart attack, stroke, heart disease, certain cancers, and lung diseases. Giving up smoking can be difficult to do and it might take multiple tries. Just because you try and fail once, doesn't mean you will fail next time.
Assess your risk. Have you considered getting a health risk assessment? The purpose of a health assessment or health screening is to detect for the potential of a disease that you don't currently have, but may be heading toward in the future. Lifestyle and medical treatment may reduce your chances of contracting a disease discovered in a health-risk assessment. By making practical changes that don't require a lot of time or monetary investment, you can make sure you are on the right path to living a long healthy life.
Dr. Robert J. Cirincione is an orthopaedic surgeon at Mid-Atlantic Orthopaedic Specialists PC and chief medical officer of TriState Health Partners. TriState Health Partners is a physician-hospital organization owned by more than 200 physicians and Washington County Hospital.
