Do You Practice Medical Self-Care?
Something not frequently addressed by the survival and prepping community is the importance of good health and medical self-care. What I am referring to is individual responsibility for our own physical and mental wellness.
Why is this important? If there were to be a major disruptive event, whether local, regional or global in nature, you will need the stamina to survive adverse and even austere conditions, perhaps with minimal food, shelter, and water. Health care facilities may be scarce if they exist at all.
Think about it. As much as we prep and do our best to store a year’s worth of food and supplies, how much attention do we actually pay to take care of ourselves and staying informed of medical issues and topics? For most of us, I can pretty much guarantee that food, water, and supplies come first, closely followed by bullets and band-aids.
In a very worst case scenario, would you have the stamina and health to leave the comfort of your home with only the clothes on your back, a bug-out-bag and whatever else you could physically carry? Answer honestly. Are you healthy enough to do that?
Even if you were not required to leave your home, would you have the mental acuity to handle the challenge of no electricity, no running water, and no sewer or septic system for waste?
I ask these questions today not to chide you to lose ten pounds or to take on a rigorous exercise routine. Instead, I ask them so that you will think about your own health in terms of those things you can do now to become accomplished at medical self-care so that you will stay healthy and stay fit even when professional medical care is not readily available.
But first, let us define medical self-care.
What the Heck is Medical Self-care?
Medical self-care is defined as those things that individuals do to deal with minor illness and injuries at home, including preventing, detecting, and treating sickness and disease. Nothing weird, nothing “out there”. Instead, medical self-care refers to making an attempt to initially take hold of and treat minor healthcare issues yourself.
Or, put another way, simply asking yourself if you need to see a healthcare provider or whether you can you apply a home treatment instead. Medical self-care can be as simple as taking an over-the-counter medication for a headache, using essential oils to relieve minor aches and pains, or securing a sprained ankle with an ace bandage.
Most important, medical self-care means you are an active participant in your own health. And for that, you need to take a proactive stance and take control over your own well-being.
8 Rules of Medical Self-Care that will Ensure Survival in Adverse Conditions
1. Listen to your body since you know yourself best. When you do not feel well, take care of yourself.
Since the beginning of time, humans have suffered from mild illnesses and simply taken it easy until the illness passed. These days, however, with computers, the internet, cell phones and other gizmos, a lot of sick time is spent in the digital world instead getting real rest. If you are going to be your optimal self, when feeling unwell, take the time to slow down for a few hours or a day, and give yourself time to heal.
2. Stay abreast of common first aid procedures and utilize readily available resources to stay knowledgeable of viable solutions to everyday medical maladies.
With the resources currently available, much day to day doctoring can be done at home. Things like taking one’s vital signs and blood pressure or testing one’s urine are easily and safely accomplished at home. Learning to do these things now without reliance on a health professional will allow to take control of your own wellness no matter what happens in our society.
3. Understand that being healthy and well meaning more than simply being disease free.
The spread between wellness and illness is large with a lot of room in between. Prevention means focusing on good health while you are still on the wellness side of the spectrum rather than waiting to act only when disease or disability occurs.
4. The goal of any health care system should be to help people stay healthy by giving them the tools that they need to take care of themselves. You need to make that happen yourself.
To a large extent, individual practitioners still feel this way but for one reason or another, have had to subrogate those feelings as part of their alliance with large group practices. These larger practices, many of which are huge conglomerates , have allegiance to big pharma and wall street interests. This means that patient care comes secondary to making money.
The solution? Individuals need to take more responsibility themselves through knowledge and through healthy lifestyle choices. And when we do need medical care, we need to seek out healthcare workers who put our own needs first, above and beyond those of their employer or the greedsters who only care about money and huge year-end bonuses.
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