This article is part of a patient education series that I previously published elsewhere. Explanation is here. If you have already read this article, please accept my apologies.

I am sure most people know that you can live longer by giving up all your vices and exercising regularly. I am not going to talk about that, as those methods aren’t really easy ways to live longer.

Instead, I am going to give you five straightforward ways to improve your health. Most of these things will take a bit of time, so consider them as time investments. These investments also have compound effects – the earlier you think about your health, the better your outcome will be.

1. Get a doctor you are happy with and trust.

Your health is much better served by having regular check ups. People who lurch between “disaster appointments” can only keep substandard health. Furthermore, we are not that great at picking when we are getting sick. If you have a trusted primary doctor, you are more likely to ‘fess up to embarrassing problems, or even problems you are not sure about. If you are unhappy with who you have, try someone new.

2. Visit your doctor often – everytime you feel like it

The human body is a magnificent machine, and tends to look after itself. It is very uncommon to get so sick that you suddenly keel over. So, illness is usually detectable far in advance. Visit your doctor regularly to take advantage of that.

For example, instead of running out of a prescription and having to quickly call in to get a repeat, plan for it. When you get your pills, figure out when they will be finished and write it in your diary. Then you can ring up a week ahead to get a real appointment. If you plan, you will get in. So you rock up and get your prescription.

For the price of being organized and 30 minutes waiting, you and your doctor get a unique opportunity. Your doctor will probably take the time to look at your health as a whole. They could:

• Check your blood pressure, blood sugar, or similar. Lots of tests are important to preventative medicine, but get missed when people are in a hurry.
• Read through your notes and make sure you haven’t missed any test results. Results sometimes are missed, and we see the bad consequences in the news a lot. God forbid it should happen to any of us, but couldn’t things be completely different for those people if they had of seen their doctor two weeks later for an unrelated reason?
• Talk about your family history (see below)
• Talk about your future plans. Doctors love to see people before they go overseas to offer them immunisations. Doctors also love to see people before they start trying to get pregnant, as they can help prevent some familial diseases, and advise about doing things to make your baby fitter, such as taking vitamins, or helping you quit smoking. Doctors love to see people before they try to get fit, so they can check their cardiovascular system out. All these things make you a healthier person.
• Give you an opportunity to vent about your life, and possibly even offer some support, either by recommending a counselor, or home help services, or letting you know about a support group.

If you and your doctor are not having time to look at your overall wellbeing, you are not seeing them enough, and you are not getting value for your health.

3. Examine your family history

A lot of medical conditions are not random. Heart disease, breast cancer, asthma and allergy are all inherited diseases.

Talk to your surviving parents or grandparents about what conditions they may have had in the family. Through my Gran, who was a family history freak, I know that polydactyly (being born with more than 5 fingers) runs in our family. So it wouldn’t have caught me as much by surprise if that happened to one of my children. Luckily, it seems to not be an ongoing trait. More commonly, people often know of uncles or parents who were diagnosed early (before 60) with heart disease or cancers. Some of these people should have extra screening at an earlier age.

It is important to note that previous generations felt very secretive about their health. There are some conditions that are still considered to have a stigma associated with them, especially in some cultures. For example, mental illness in our culture is still treated like a dark family secret. So it is important not to assume you are ok, just because you have never been told. Do some family snooping.

If you find out about any conditions that might be familial, discuss them with your trusted doctor.

4. Get outside once a day

It seems so simple, but it is hard to do. Visiting the “outside” works on many levels.

• UV light is good for us and improves mood.
• “Inside air” contains a lot more particulates and microbes, such as skin cells and bacteria. “Outside air” usually contains a lot more pollutants like carbon and soot, but it still makes you feel better.
• People who work inside normally have trouble continuing work outside, so it works as an enforced break.
• Most people exercise more simply by the fact of being outside. There are no lifts or travelators outside, and even if you sit on a chair in the park, you still need to walk to get there, and it is often furhter than you can walk insude your office without looking silly.

5. Exercise and give up all your vices.

OK, so I fibbed. It is important to give up some vices, but try to see giving up as a treatment for a medical condition. If you try to change a long-standing habit, you need to be fully motivated and you need to be doing it for yourself. Tackle them on thing at a time, and make a real effort.

There are lots of people trying to make a lot of money out of getting people to give up smoking, drugs, obesity and any other number of vices. However, it doesn’t mean those techniques are not worth trying. The idea that we need to do it all ourselves is pretty outdated, nowadays. So if you want to do the right thing about one of your guilty pleasures, do whatever it is you need to do and demand whatever help you need.