Is awareness better than cure?
On one very fine day, I was observing how people in Glasgow check the weather before choosing their clothes for the day. Yes, this seems like a very Scottish trend. Being a public health professional, I realized that it was the awareness of weather that made the Scottish think so much about their fashion choices, and decide whether to pack an emergency umbrella!
What is awareness and why it is necessary? Is it just information, precaution or realization of the surrounding world? Well, awareness about your own body and changes happening in the surrounding world is empowering. Knowing about health risks, being vigilant about these things and cautiously avoiding their adverse effects of them is awareness. For example, imagine a person living a sedentary life, having a stressful job, not getting time to eat freshly cooked nutritious food, having no energy to do exercise, and carrying some extra fat around the central area of the trunk. In addition to all these characteristics, this particular individual has a history of diabetes and hypertension in their family. In this scenario, do you think this specific individual is aware of what is coming up and what precautionary actions are needed?
Taking care of you, your family and our environment fall into each one's basket. Taking care is nothing but preventing a subject from facing uncertain things. Prevention is simply a stitch in time that saves nine. One can wisely escape or delay health troubles only if they are well aware of their own self and lifestyle. To incorporate preventive measures in your day-to-day life, being informative is necessary. Awareness is a basic requirement for the efficient survival of a human being. Moreover, being aware and spreading awareness is the demand of the day.
To be informed about our own system and the surrounding world means taking small yet bold steps toward health. To start with some smaller steps, we can read health-related articles, try to eat more homemade food, move our body to burn some extra calories, visit our family physician regularly and follow their advice. Along with this, paying attention to changes taking place in your body is vital. Here when we talk about one's well-being, we give equal preference to physical and mental health.
To summarize the benefits of awareness about preventing measures we can take note that all health workers and government cautiously work on creating awareness about available preventive facilities and building new policies as per demand. Prevention is always cheaper than the cure in terms of money, possible side effects, execution etc.; our one step towards undertaking preventative measures can improve quality of life, delay or prevent disease processes, and increase healthy life expectancy.
About the Author:
Dr. Priyanka Mohol [BHMS, PGDEMS & CC, DDHN, MPH (Scotland)]
Public Health Consultant & Community Nutrition Specialist
