Preventive health strategies

Preventive health strategies

Employers can play an important role in changing sedentary lifestyles of their employees by providing a place where employees can regularly get into fitness, says Dr Lalita Sekhar


Physical wellness can be achieved with the help of preventive health strategies such as:

Nutrition:

Eating a healthy balanced diet to avoid obesity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus and heart disease.

Exercise:

To prevent osteoporosis and muscular pain and maintaining normal metabolic parameters by reducing cholesterol and blood sugar levels

Immunization:

Is required for prevention of serious infective illnesses like hepatitis, tetanus, pneumonia and influenza.

Counselling:

Is done for screening familial diseases like breast, colon and prostate cancers. Genetically-prone individuals are offered tests such as mammogram and colonoscopy for early detection.

Lifestyle management:

Maintenance of weight according to age and build, avoiding excessive alcohol intake and tobacco consumption which can result in chronic liver disease, throat, lung and oesophageal cancers.

Preventive health checks



General health check:

Detailed history and physical test; routine blood, urine, stool tests, liver, kidney and pulmonary function tests and chest X-ray .

Well women check:

Pelvic ultrasound and PAP smear examination.

Heart check:

Lipid profile, ECG, TMT test and echocardiogram.

Cancer detection checks:

For people who have a strong family history of cancers; CEA for colon cancer, Ca 125 for ovarian cancer, and PSA for prostate cancer. People spend more time at work than home. Employers have an important role to play in changing employees sedentary lifestyles. They can provide a facilitating environment and infrastru-cture to motivate employees to undertake physical exercise and stress-relieving measures like yoga or gym, together with regular check-ups and counselling for preventive health care.