6 Health-Related Questions to Answer That Will Improve Your Life

When you’re looking to improve your overall health, it’s useful to break things down into different aspects of your health outlook. This way, you’re able to home in on those areas that perhaps need more attention than others to get a health boost.

Here are six questions to ask about the state of your health to have a better life.

How’s Your Hearing?

If you’ve been suffering from hearing loss and haven’t done anything about it, then maybe it’s time to get checked out. Suffering from a hearing loss or having occasional ringing in your ears for no discernable reason is a real cause for concern. Put your mind at rest by getting a test done.

Getting a Hearing Test is Quick and Simple

Hearing tests are easily administered at certain Costco stores or HearUSA. They’re inexpensive to have done and don’t take too long. Making an appointment is simple and you can fit one in during a lunch break, right after work, or on the weekend at some retail locations.

Do You have a Hearing Aid Already?

If you have a hearing aid already, then you’re probably dealing with the issue of moisture getting inside one of your devices and possibly causing it to be less effective. This is a real issue for some people, especially when they live in humid environments or wear the hearing aid for longer than normal.

One way to deal with the issue is to get a hearing aid dryer. This is a small device where a pair of hearing aids can be placed inside. The devices use UV light, which removes moisture in and around the hearing aid. It also destroys germs like bacteria and viruses that have been picked up along the way too. The UV light is emitted inside a closed container and so isn’t damaging to anyone in the room.

How Are Your Teeth?

Some of us are great about dealing with our teeth. We make regular appointments and have them taken care of by a friendly dentist. However, not everyone is like that. Sometimes, our dentist has mentioned that a couple of wisdom teeth are pushing on other nearby teeth and should be extracted… and we’ve been stalling. Or, we just didn’t go to our last appointment and haven’t been back since. Which one are you, honestly?

Regular Maintenance

In terms of regular maintenance, the best thing we can do for our teeth is to brush them at least twice a day and follow up with regular flossing. Flossing is important because food particles get stuck in between our teeth that brushing doesn’t get to fast enough, if at all. As part of an oral care routine, flossing prevents bacterial build-up, which could potentially cause the plague to develop and, subsequently, gum disease. Gum disease is difficult to manage once it develops and generally isn’t reversible, so it’s best to maintain regular maintenance of our teeth to avoid as many future problems as possible.

Useful Dental Procedures

Getting fillings, crowns, and root canals taken care of isn’t fun, but it avoids tooth decay and other issues creating larger oral health issues down the road. Teeth that aren’t taken care of may become so unhealthy that it affects our gums. Gum disease can cause the loss of that tooth and potentially others as well. None of us can afford to be complacent when it comes to our teeth.

If you haven’t been checked out recently, get an appointment. Shop around for the best pricing near you to find a deal, especially if you know that you’re going to need more work done than a general checkup and polishing.

How’s Your Diet?

While we’re a big proponent of including herbs in our readers’ diets, the main thing with an eating plan is that it’s good for you. This means it should be healthily prepared and nutritious. When it’s a balanced meal plan – both for every meal and through the day – then you’re certainly starting on the right track.

Learning to Cook

If you’re not much of a cook and tend to get takeout too often after work, then we’d suggest picking up a couple of cookery books from your local library. You might also want to locate some cooking channels on YouTube. There are cooking channels on just about every type of cuisine you can think of on YouTube. There are also some channels that focus on healthier meals, vegetarian, and other specializations to narrow down what you’re looking for.

Practice Makes Perfect

Unlike cooking TV shows, YouTube videos tend to focus directly on how to prepare and cook a single dish. You can make a list of the ingredients needed, go shopping, return, and prepare the meal while watching the short video step-by-step.

By working with a few dishes that you like, it’s possible to practice a different one each day of the week until you’ve repeated it enough times to be confident cooking seven new healthy choices. This will prevent any takeout temptation when you can prepare healthy, tasty meals yourself, and probably at a lower cost too.

How’s Your Soft Drink and Alcohol Consumption?

What we drink is a good question to think about when looking at diets. We don’t always consider what we drink as an issue, but if you’re choosing soda and other sugar-laden drinks over natural spring water, then your daily calorie and sugar consumption could be higher than you realize.

The same is true for alcohol. Each beer or spirit downed is more calories. Also, most people tend to drink socially in the evening when there’s little time left in the day to burn off the calories before bedtime. While drinking a few units of alcohol each week is not a major health no-no, it’s still calorific and could still be impactful the next day when getting up or trying to concentrate at work. Is it time to cut back to be healthier?

How’s Your Weight Management?

Checking on your weight follows naturally after considering what you’re eating and drinking. It all contributes to our total calorie intake each day. The key consideration with weight level and fluctuations in our calorie intake and how much we tend to burn off. If there’s a net positive, then we’re gaining weight. If there’s a net negative, we’re burning excess fat.

Eating healthier is certainly possible. We covered some points about that in an earlier section. We have other articles on this site about how to use herbs to be healthier, naturally. Think about what you’re eating and drinking, but also the time of day when most consumption occurs is important too.

The habit of having a heavy meal in the evening isn’t a healthy one because it’s difficult to burn off all those calories before bedtime. Similarly, skipping breakfast or grabbing something sugary like a snack and a Starbucks coffee isn’t ideal either because the body isn’t being given the fuel it needs until the afternoon. Eating balanced nutritious meals earlier in the day and lighter in the evening is a good initial approach to weight management.

How’s Your Exercise Plan?

The other side of weight management is regular exercise. It might be something that you’ve had a love/hate relationship with over the years. Certainly, as you age it gets more difficult to resume an exercise program that you abandoned years ago. Once into the late 30s or early 40s, the knees start to be less cooperative and occasionally crack with a lack of enthusiasm! No matter. Once you get back into the habit of regular exercise again, it becomes much easier to maintain from there.

Go Slow at First

The older you are and the longer period that you haven’t exercised for, the best advice is to go slowly for the first few days and weeks. This is the time when going too far and doing too much can potentially cause an injury because your muscles, tendons, and joints just aren’t used to getting an extra workout.

Distract Yourself

If you’re overweight, probably light walking is the easiest thing to do. It’s not so taxing on the knees and ankles. Walk outside in the park whether possible to break up the monotony. Listen to music, an audiobook or podcasts to keep your mind off the physical activity while you’re getting used to the new level of exertion.

With these health-related questions answered, you now have a better idea of what areas you should attend to or allocate more time towards. This provides useful clarity and direction for what you’ll be focusing on over the next few months. Make a solid plan for what you will do towards making health improvements. This might be creating a new schedule including regular exercise, making a concerted effort to learn to cook better, or to get your teeth taken care of. Tackle them one at a time if you need to. Making the first step is the hardest. Do it soon.