Читать книгу Getting Out Alive: A Guide to Surviving Hospital - Michael Alexander - Страница 8

So there is hope.

What we do very well is treating symptoms to help a patient get better. Another key part of our job is reducing a patient’s chances of getting ill again. How do we stop you getting ill again? Well that’s really up to you. You see, it all comes down to ‘risk factors’ …

Whenever medical people deal with a patient, they will at some point consider the patient’s ‘risk factors’.

Quite simply, health, or the lack of it, comes down to a handful of things that you can do to either increase your chances of staying healthy or increase your chances of getting ill. All medical staff think in these terms, and it doesn’t matter where you’re from, the risk factors are the same for everyone:

– Alcohol and other drugs

– Diet and cholesterol

– Weight

– Smoking

– Exercise

– Environment

– Family history and genetic factors

– Age

How a patient shapes up against these factors will affect their treatment and prognosis.

You might have noticed that there are only two factors that you can’t do anything about, and those are the final two: genetics and age. However, even by just being aware of your family history you can help yourself. For example, if you know every male in your family has had a heart attack in their early forties, you can get regular check-ups of your heart.

The other factors are entirely up to you. People may think that it doesn’t matter how they live, because modern medicine will cure them. They may think that the doctor at your local hospital will fix any problem they may have, but for the most part, they’d be wrong.