Important Things You Need to Include in Your Health Journal

Living a healthy lifestyle isn't a walk in the park. With a need to keep an eye on nearly everything you consume and do, it is easy to overlook many things and jeopardise your health. A health journal can go a long way in helping you maintain a healthy lifestyle. Simply, the journal is a comprehensive record of your health that keeps track of nearly all health aspects related to your life. In case you need medical attention from your family doctor or any other medical practitioner, a reference to your health journal will come in handy during diagnosis and prescriptions. If you want to keep a health journal, here are some important things that you should include:

Medical Conditions and Illness in Your Family

Are there any chronic disorders and genetic conditions in your immediate family among siblings or parents? Such conditions include autism, albinism, sickle cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis, and kidney disease. These conditions and illnesses can be passed down the family tree from parents to any member of the family through a biological process referred to as genetic inheritance. If any member of your family has a genetic disorder, you need to indicate it in your health journal. It will help practitioners to identify such conditions in their developmental stage (in case you have them), enabling you to manage them early enough.

Allergies

Are you allergic to any food, drink, medication, fabric or cosmetic product? Your need to indicate this in your journal so that medical practitioners can avoid any of these products when treating you. Common signs of an allergy include developing a skin rash, itchiness, sneezing, wheezing, reddening and watering of the eyes and a clogged nose. Your face, tongue, lips or eyes can also swell. If any of these symptoms develop each time you use a certain a product (food, medication or clothing among others), then you had better take note of it as something you are allergic to.

Surgeries and Hospitalisations

These days, medical technology has facilitated surgical procedures where the patient can heal without a scar or evidence that surgical procedures were performed on them. Therefore, your journal should include any surgeries that you have had in the past so that practitioners can take necessary precautionary measures in any subsequent surgeries that you may need. To add on that, record any time that you have been hospitalised including the medication you were given to deal with the condition.

Share