What is preventive healthcare?
Prevention is better than cure. Easier said than done. In this digital age when we are so pressed for time, we care little what the search for convenience has landed us with. We don’t have maids to wash the plates for guests, so we prefer one time plastic plates. When we have headache because we were too busy to eat something, we pop in two paracetamols quickly. Because carrying water bottles is uncool, so we keep buying onetime mineral water bottles. Because we don’t have time to cut fruits for snacking, we lavishly enjoy singaras from the road side tong.
In all spheres of our lives, convenience has become our god. & this is the biggest logic we use against having a preventive lifestyle. But have we done our calculations straight – I mean the calculations of convenience for preventive lifestyle! I guess not.
Lets assume, Mr. X never believed in preventive lifestyle, or he perhaps did, but he never had the time to endure a preventive lifestyle. So every morning he woke up at the last hour, skipped breakfast, started day with a cup of coffee, and kept taking cups after cups of coffees in the meeting. The first meal of the day being lunch taken in the afternoon and then following up with loads of cigarette breaks, at night either will eat out or at home will fill like eating everything that’s on the table, will scroll the mobile till late at night snacking on whatever sweet items and chocolates he would get his hands on in the fridge, will go to sleep at 3 am to start the next day in the same mode again. Weekends will be slightly better because Mr. X will at least have a brunch because he will wake up late and then sleeping for the rest of the day having lunch in the afternoon and a very late dinner, well let’s not punish him on a weekend. In between he must ensure that his medicine box is filled with medicines for his gastric, sleep disorder, diabetes, thyroid,
Then one fine morning it all collapses; emergency room, hundreds of tests, few blocks in the heart, a surgery, boxes filled with medicine and at least two million taka spent. Mr. X now has to have a disciplined life and he tries to follow, he is conscious and he is now happy. He feels settled and advises everyone generously on the need of a disciplined lifestyle.
But was it required in the first place? Mr. X could have been happier, healthier and more in control of his own life only if he had the mental strength to choose a preventive lifestyle over convenience.
