Beyond Treatment: The Transformative Power of Preventive Medicine

10 Dec

Written By Lukas .

Beyond Treatment: The Transformative Power of Preventive Medicine in Shaping Long-Term Quality of Life

Hey there, Let's talk about two different ways we approach our health. One is when we're already feeling under the weather, and we seek help to fix the issue – that's sick treatment medicine. The other is about staying ahead of the game, actively working to prevent problems from popping up in the first place – welcome to the world of preventive medicine. These approaches don't just differ in how they handle health; they shape our well-being and quality of life in the long run.

Sick Treatment Medicine: Playing Catch-Up

This one's all about dealing with health problems as they come. You feel unwell, go to the doc, get a diagnosis, and start the treatment. It's like fixing a leaky roof when it rains – effective, but it doesn't stop the rain from coming and if left unchecked will rot the structure of your house.

Preventive or Proactive Medicine: Staying a Step Ahead

Now, preventive medicine is like having a good umbrella. It's not about waiting for the rain; it's about being ready for it and actively avoiding it. This approach focuses on keeping us healthy in the first place and on top of our health markers. Think regular check-ups, a good diet, staying active, and managing stress. It's about creating a lifestyle that keeps the doctor visits less frequent and minor.As well as understanding that normal health doesnt mean optimal health.

The First Steps

This doesn’t mean obsess over health ever second of your life. But it does mean that the average joe should get a basic understanding of what is health looks like for them not just the normal. Challenging what the general population understands as healthy.

Small things I started with was to get an overview of my health as it was.

Cardiovascular ability
Conversation with family about hereditary diseases (To understand if i had any obvious predispositions)
Blood Markers and pressure (To Make sure that i was within normal references ranges first and to get a baseline before i made any life changes)
Daily Hydration

lets start with the easiest one to gauge; your hydration. are you drinking 2-4 litres of water each day? are you getting your electrolyte intake too? Next lets go into the conversation about hereditary disease, while it may not be an easy topic to bring up it is worth asking within your family if they have any knowledge or family hiustroy of CVD (Cardio vascular disease), Diabetes , Organ failures etc. This information can get you a solid understanding of what you might be of higher risk of getting and allow you too look further into specific blood markers to get a better insight into your health. Now lets tackle the elephant in the room, your cardio vascular ability , unfortunately there an idea that 10k steps each day is enough for high performance cardio vascular health, unfortunately thats just not the case. What you are aiming for is about 120-150 minutes a week of zone 2 cardio or above (60-70% of max heart rate). This is where we really reap the benefits of cardio without putting too much strain on your cns fatiguing you unnecessarily.

Now the one that might be seen as invasive for some, i swear its painless; Blood tests. If you’ve never ordered your own blood tests and dont know where to start, therell be some info on what i did below. This allows you to get a snapshot in time of your health markers. While on their own they meanr elatively little over time you can use your trends in your blood tests to see if you are heading in the right direction or if something has suddnely changed and should be flagged, even if you are still within the “Normal” ranges. Ultimately allowing you to set up your own normal ranges.

My Adjustments

My Main Adjustments during this time to optimise my health happened in form of 5 things

Adjusting my caffeine intake to before 2pm, Sleeping at regular times (most days thats 10:30 pm) supplementing with Magnesium Bisglycinate, My sleep quality is Wonderful now and i wake up refreshed most days.
Cut out alcohol almost completely, i have maybe 20-30 standards of alcohol per year
Implementing cardio into my workout routine; Ive been going to the gym consistently(4-6 days a week) since 2018, Implementing a varied PPL split, but cardio never really interested me besides when i was on a cut. But now that i’ve added it in year round my lifts have improved faster and so has my recovery as well as just being more energetic throughout the day. My lipid profile also improved to the point where its what i would say its perfect.
I try to get my bloodwork every 3-6 months. Which while might seem like overkill to some, it gives me peace of mind (While doing my experiments) and allows to me to gauge trends of how what i do effects my body, or atleast provide an insight. For example my Lipid profile among my first set of blood tests had average hdl but elevated ldl and the ratio between the two were less than ideal. Some of the changes i made were direclty due to seeing the raw data of my health infront of me and while i knew things like alcohol being taxing on the liver , seeing the transient spikes on a LFT blood panel really hones in effect on a personal level. These are all things that i new before but didn’t take seriously until i had the data of my own body in front of me.
Tracking what i eat daily. This is where i know im going to loose a lot of you but it truly has allowed me to hit my own body goals so much more easily (E.g Putting on mass or cutting down for summer). The main leath benefit i have here is being able to get a rough understanding what foods contain and allowing myself to shift to more whole foods and meal prepping to make the whole thing easier.

While i would say these things are still tip of the iceberg stuff for myself, i do plan to get my own genome mapped and organ imaging as well as other health screens in order to be confident with my own health. Not due to any problems but because i feel amazing and want to have the snapshot and data of what that looks like to maintain it and get back to incase i loose the feeling.

I hope this starts a thought process into your own health and what you consider as healthy, allowing you to have a higher quality of life for longer, rather than only tackling them when problems arise. :)

My favourite read regarding the matter: