The Importance Of First Aid In Being Healthy
Healthy Vs Unhealthy: Which One Are You? When we ask the question, ‘what does it mean to be healthy’ we also need to ask the bigger question of what it means to be unhealthy.
Without establishing a general populace guideline and tier that most of society will fall into collectively, otherwise known as ‘the norm’, we cannot establish what the extremes at either end of normal are to become. So, let’s dig deeper into healthy and unhealthy without all the jargon.
To be considered normal when we talk about being healthy means that we eat a balanced diet and do some form of exercise regularly, even if it is only walking around the block every day. We keep vices like fatty foods, alcohol, sugar, and both prescription and recreational drugs to a minimum. A healthy person has the right combination of moderation and balance in all areas, ensuring they stay within their BMI and don’t venture into excess in any area.
Healthy V Unhealthy: BMI
The Body Mass Index is a guide for measuring a person’s height against their weight. For most people, the BMI is a great indicator of healthy body weight versus unhealthy body weight. There are exceptions to the usefulness of the BMI. Certain groups of ethnic people, people with dwarfism or gigantism and bodybuilders cannot use the BMI as an accurate gauge of overall health and would be considered unhealthy by the BMI scale when in fact, they are perfectly healthy; they merely do not conform to the label of ‘the norm’.
With any measure we use in life, there will always be exceptions to the rules and those individuals who push the boundaries well out of proportion. On the one hand, you have the overly fit, those individuals who punish and train themselves to do seemingly inhuman feats that leave the rest of us to wonder what mental disorder or childhood trauma afflicts them. We can only wonder what drives them to overachieve to such a clearly ‘abnormal’ and unhealthy level well above the moderation required to remain healthy.
Pair that with the individuals who never get off the sofa, and even then, only to shuffle to the fridge or the front door to accept the latest fast-food delivery. Individuals who place themselves in the firing line for heart attacks, morbid obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes and on goes the endless list of medical issues that an unhealthy person will accrue and require medical intervention and treatment to correct.
When we discard the extremes of society that fall outside of ‘the norm’, we can focus on healthy and unhealthy within the general population. So, what is needed to be a normal, healthy individual?
Healthy Vs Unhealthy: A Balanced Diet
Debate rages endlessly over the definition of a balanced meal. Experts constantly change their minds on the health benefits of every food item, and any advice they offer should be taken with a grain of salt and used in conjunction with your own circumstances, dietary needs, culture, and chosen lifestyles.
What is considered a well-balanced meal for someone who eats everything is different from that of someone who only eats plant-based foods. So how do we arrive at a place we can call healthy with such vastly different sources and lifestyles to choose from?
The answer isn’t to be found in books or by experts but in the age-old use of the word moderation.
“Everything is good for you in moderation. Most lack the willpower or the inclination to limit themselves to moderation when push comes to shove.” –Arabella Skane.
Healthy Vs Unhealthy Food Fitness Video:
Healthy Vs Unhealthy: Exercise
Using moderation as the new guideline, we all have different physical constitutions and require different forms of exercise. Some will play sports; some will have hobbies like golf that require gentle but long-distance walking. Some will hit the gym for a cardio blast or a weights routine, and others still will cross-train themselves out of the healthy bracket and into the excessive bracket in which they place themselves at the risk of having a medical emergency in the form of a heart attack, stroke, or aneurysm.
You might not instantly think of an overly fit person being a candidate for a heart attack, but a large number of ultra-fit people suffer a heart attack every year in gyms across the globe, and ironically while in their thirties. That astounding discovery seems to fly in the face of exercise being good for us. Why should we exercise if our chances of having a heart attack are just as good being fit and healthy as they are being unhealthy?
The answer once again is to do everything in moderation.
Healthy Vs Unhealthy Fitness Video:
Healthy vs Unhealthy EXERCISE // Eating Disorder Recovery
Healthy Vs Unhealthy: Rest
Getting the right amount of rest and sleep is crucial for cognitive reasoning and clear logic processing. If you spend your days tired, you are not as productive or motivated as someone who had a good night’s sleep. When your ability to think clearly and logically is compromised, it leads to inattention, mistakes, and accidents, all of which could require some form of First Aid treatment. Taking time off and, where possible taking a vacation or getaway can greatly improve your life in all areas as it recharges your batteries and restores balance to your life.
Healthy Vs Unhealthy: Mental Health
Good mental health is harder than ever to maintain in this day and age. There seems to be an increasing number of stressors and lifestyle choices, social disengagement, career commitments and family dramas that push us to the brink of breakdown that never used to be in place.
For all the hype about technology making our lives easier, it appears to have had the opposite effect, and that effect is a growing concern for every man, woman, and child. Depression and PTSD are the two most common forms of mental illness that afflict society, and both can be treated with the correct diagnosis and subsequent treatment plan.
Sadly, the age of children being diagnosed with depression is alarmingly high. Yet, we haven’t stopped to ask the question: What are we doing to create so much sadness and apathy in our everyday lives that even our young children develop mental illnesses in their primary school years?
First Aid Knowledge Of Signs And Symptoms
In our everyday lives, we don’t think of First Aid knowledge as being a necessary skill or requirement to function in life. The reality is surprisingly different in that having First Aid knowledge and skills transfers across every area of your life and shows up in the most unlikely places when you least expect it.
How often have your children run into the house screaming blue murder and in tears as they present their latest result of bare leg meets tarmac at speed, and you have an entire leg full of gravel and dirt to clean, disinfect and dress?
Perhaps it was that time you realised the cap on one of the bottles of pills in your bathroom was on the floor and then discovered your child thought the tube of sleeping tables were lollies you had been hiding from them and ate the lot?
Maybe you fell off your horse and broke some bones, or your spouse fell off the roof while cleaning the gutters and can’t feel anything below his waist.
Lastly, maybe you are out dining, and someone suddenly starts choking on food. The waiter shouts, “Does anyone know how to stop them from choking to death?”
If you read the above and instantly know what First Aid to provide should that situation be presented to you, then you have likely undertaken some form of First Aid training, or you missed your calling. You should have been a doctor with that natural aptitude for problem-solving.
If you couldn’t answer any of the questions, you might seriously need to ask yourself the big question: Isn’t it about time I took a FACE First Aid course and brushed up on my CPR skills? The answer is yes! It is certainly time you booked yourself onto the next available course in your area and gained national certification and accreditation in First Aid. While you are looking into courses, check out our FACE Blog page and read up on a range of topics and First Aid articles designed to improve your First Aid skills and knowledge.
Even healthy people require First Aid treatment from time to time. First Aid treatment is giving someone two aspirin and suggesting they get some rest if they have a headache. So don’t procrastinate a day longer. Meet new people, learn new skills, and have fun as you learn the basic First Aid skills for saving the day and potentially saving someone’s life!
