During this session we explored what each of us do to stay healthy. This is a particularly important subject, statistics showing that doctors have one of the highest rates of suicide and drug and alcohol abuse (see BMJ student health matters and BMA doctors health matters, for a summary of a recently held conference on the subject) At first I found this difficult as I don’t knowingly do anything for the purpose of staying healthy. However, after further thought I realised I that I do in fact do things which help keep me healthy, just not through the traditional methods of playing sport and going for runs etc. After writing down ways of keeping healthy we split them into sections: physical, emotional, social and spiritual, my list was:
Physical: Get a good amount of sleep, walking to the hospital and back each day
Emotional: Talk to friends and family in times of stress
Social: Socialise with friends and keep in contact with friends from home
Spiritual: Nothing!
Environmental: Nothing!
This session allowed me to appreciate how much I do in fact do to stay healthy at the moment. However, it also allowed me to find areas where I can make improvements to give me a healthier lifestyle. The biggest area in which I can make improvement is my diet, generally living on easy to cook, ready made meals. Although I know this to be unhealthy, I manage to persuade myself that it costs too much money to eat properly and I haven’t got enough time to go food shopping. However, in reality by doing online shopping at a supermarket, it would turn out cheaper and it gets delivered to my door so I can’t reasonably state that argument. Therefore this weeks’ task is to order some relatively healthy food online to be delivered.
In terms of the other categories, I seem to be good at social and emotional, however somewhat lacking in spiritual and environmental. Not being religious, I assumed the spiritual category not to be relevant to me. However, having discussed this further with other members of the group, I realise there are other ways this can be achieved. Keeping in touch with nature, by walks on the beach for example, can help me to do that (and increases exercise levels!). In terms of environmental, my bedroom in my house, my main environment, is generally very messy and not particularly inspiring or relaxing. I therefore feel I can dramatically improve this area by finding some sort of system to organise my room making it nicer to come home to – maybe buy some plants as well!
Having said all this I recognise that it is unrealistic to try and achieve all these in a short space of time. I have therefore decided to stick with the main aim of ordering some proper food this week, and achieving any others to be a bonus. I will from then on, try to do at least one thing from the list every two weeks and see how I progress.
Feeling of health: 8/10
What I learned: That I do more to stay healthy than I think
What I will change: Try to achieve one thing from the list each week
Evaluation - one week on
I feel I have been quite successful this week in achieving my aims set out. I made a good start by ordering lots of healthy food off the internet and therefore being able to eat healthily. I felt the effects of this
quite quickly, feeling better and healthier in myself for doing so. Whether it was the effects of eating more healthily or just the knowledge I was doing something positive about my health I,m not sure - either way I felt better so that’s got to be positive! Feeling motivated by this, I also went for a walk on the beach, which as well as benefiting me in terms of exercise, I felt the sound of the waves and the peacefulness of the beach in the early morning very relaxing and calming, indeed, I felt more awake despite getting up earlier than usual and felt it more beneficial than a lie in. I therefore feel that eating healthily and walking on the beach are things I should be able to, and want to, continue. I will therefore try and put these into my routine and then gradually try and include others from my list.
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