Health Preservation Continuum
Thinking Differently About Good Health
Most of us pay the greatest attention to our health when something goes wrong.
We gain weight and decide to get back in shape. A medical test comes back abnormal and we change our diet. We develop an illness and begin thinking seriously about what we should do differently. Sometimes we look to healthcare professionals to help us regain what has been lost.
People often become conscious of health when they are trying to prevent losing it or trying to regain what has already been lost. We are less likely to regard the good health we already have as something requiring deliberate lifelong preservation.
But what about when we are healthy?
That question is at the heart of what I call the Health Preservation Continuum.
The concept is simple: Good health should be something we deliberately preserve throughout life, not something we begin thinking about only when it is threatened or lost.
If I am healthy today, that is not a reason to stop thinking about my health. It is the very reason I should continue preserving it.
Imagine teaching that way of thinking from childhood. A parent would not simply teach a child to eat well, exercise, get enough sleep or avoid harmful behaviors. The larger message would be that caring for your health is simply part of how you live.
As that child grows, responsibility for health gradually becomes his or her own. The practices may change with age, circumstances, illness or disability but the underlying relationship with health continues.
Being healthy should not mean, “I’m good, so I don’t need to do anything.”
It should mean, “I’m healthy and I want to preserve as much of that health as I can for as long as I can.”
We cannot prevent every disease, disability or effect of aging. Health Preservation Continuum is not about believing that we can.
It is about changing when we begin taking responsibility for our health.
Not after something goes wrong.
While health is still there to preserve.
— Calandra Cooper, LPN