Wellness Month – It’s Time to Focus on Our Own Health
This is National Wellness Month and it’s a great time to focus on our own health. The theme this year is prioritizing your well‑being by building small, sustainable habits that support a healthier, more balanced life. I empathize with the people that are tasked with coming up with a theme each year for wellness month. You can just hear the leader telling their team that the theme must be precise and meaningful, and I think they have succeeded.
Let’s start with prioritizing your well-being. That statement seems overly simple, living things are biologically driven to protect their well-being but our advanced reasoning, mental advancement, and empathy sometimes shifts that priority. This often occurs with care givers. The same logic that is evident in the airplane pre-briefing when they say, “put your oxygen mask on before you help others” applies to caregivers. You can’t continue to offer care if you don’t pay attention to your own well-being. Sometimes we even feel selfish for taking care of ourselves, that we should be doing other more important things. That’s where this prioritizing part comes in.
At one of the conferences I attended a presenter discussed the situation where some seniors just accepted their declining health as just part of getting old. They thought they would be seen as weak if they complained about an illness or they often just accepted a new ache or pain. I was very disappointed when I found out that there is no manual on how to grow old. It’s all new and is absolutely very different for each one of us. We just don’t know what is fixable and what is just our bodies wearing out. For instance, I’m going to get my left knee replaced in a couple of months. It didn’t really hurt that much and wasn’t much of a bother, but I had a right knee that I could compare it with, and I knew that the left knee was just weak. The orthopedic doctor told me two years ago that it was bone on bone and certainly passed the insurance requirements to be replaced but I didn’t prioritize it and it’s been two years. Don’t put things off, be selfish, let the doctor tell you what can be fixed and what is just “normal” wear and tear. Prioritize your own well-being.
The next part of the theme is building small, sustainable habits. We’ve all made new year’s resolutions to work out every day, lose weight or develop our muscles (a six pack comes to mind), and we’ve all failed in some way or another. Smaller goals, like just drinking more water, taking a short walk, stretching, or even just practicing gratitude are goals that are easier to obtain and can really have an impact on our well-being. More importantly, they can lead to bigger and more impactful goals - success does breed more success. One suggestion that has worked for me and has helped me obtain goals is to tell others about my goal(s). It doesn’t sound right but sometimes we are less willing to disappoint someone else rather than ourselves. There is one other thing we can do that can have a positive impact on our well-being, the Medicare wellness check.
The yearly Medicare wellness exam is a free, once‑a‑year visit designed to help you stay healthy, prevent disease, and plan for the future. It’s not a physical exam, it’s a conversation‑based check‑in focused on your overall well‑being. This was added to the Medicare benefits a few years ago as a way to identify areas in each of our lives that can be improved. It’s more of an overall assessment of how you’re doing. While they do check your height, weight, and blood pressure the rest of the exam is just a conversation reviewing things like your medical and family history, screen for depression or cognitive changes, assess your fall risk, review your medications, discuss diet, exercise, and safety, and update your list of doctors and specialists. My Medicare provider calls me every year to schedule this wellness check and I’m sure many of you get contacted also. I know that there are many seniors who are lonely, depressed, have limited resources to obtain healthy food and needed medicine. These wellness checks can be literal life savers for these older adults. Programs and help can be obtained to overcome these limitations. Sometimes there is just a lack of knowledge about this benefit or a lack of transportation that keeps seniors from getting a wellness check. We can keep our antennas up to alert and help people get this helpful service.
There are other reasons to have a wellness check. The first time I attended a wellness check I kind of expected something like a physical exam, it seemed to me to be a waste of time and in some ways condescending. They will even come to your house to identify your living conditions and safety hazards. To make your visit more valuable they encourage you to bring:
Medication & Supplement List
Medical History
List of Allergies
Provider & Pharmacy List
Recent Health Information
Any Assistive Devices
Insurance Cards
Personal Health Goals & Questions
I put this information together and I have used it in multiple situations as I’ve filled out those exhaustive questionnaires that seem to be part of every doctor’s visit. It also helps me keep my personal emergency information that I carry with me up to date. I believe that everyone can find something valuable in their wellness check.
I encourage you all this month to take stock of your wellness, be selfish and decide, in some small way, to pay attention to your own health. Schedule a wellness check, it’s an opportunity to step back and just discuss your overall health with your doctor.
Best, Thair