Awareness vs hypochondria

Being aware of the natural variability of your body is the key to maintaining good health. And the same goes for your home — know what's normal.

My paternal grandmother died of lung cancer, aged 56. She didn’t smoke. My father died of prostrate cancer, aged 75. Prostate cancer can usually be successfully ‘managed’, it’s not an automatic death sentence. But my father was diagnosed too late and passed away less than a year after finding out. My first book, Happy Inside is dedicated to him (in many ways his death was the spur to finally write it). I wished that I could have put all the home health knowledge I’d amassed into play for him. Would it have have helped? I don’t know. But the idea that something noxious was cooking away inside him, and we didn't know, causes me pain to this day.

It’s also what prompted me to write the following (excerpted from Happy Inside)…

If we consciously ignore the nagging pain, that oddly pigmented mole, the recurrent headache or simply being tired, and push through regardless, under the surface, our bodies hold on to our emotions. A state of latent anxiety and stress will inevitably agitate what is being repressed, and at some point your body will indicate that enough is enough and you’ll find yourself laid low, ill in bed, or worse, in hospital. Our bodies are not infallible. We need to maintain awareness of their variability.

It was remembering that last sentence that made me want to write this post.

For women in particular, once we turn 40 and dive into our perimenopausal years with the phalanx of unwelcome symptoms that seem to come as par for the course with the madly fluctuating hormones, it’s more important that ever. How can we tell what’s hormonal versus something ‘other’? And how can we avoid tipping into hypochondria, running to the doctor for every ache and twinge? Also some changes are quite subtle. Certainly for me it was a shock to realise that I simply do not recover from anything as quickly as I used to, whether a cold or a cut, losing sleep or having a glass of wine. It’s a really irritating factor of getting older, rather than anything pernicious. Yet I remember when a night out on the town felt hydrating!

So what to do? Personally, I get a basic body MOT every year (from Bluecrest Health Screening, 50% discounted via my health insurance, Vitality, if you’re interested — it rewards you for staying active). For about £80 it’s a pretty comprehensive check of my bloods, kidney, heart and lung function, cholesterol, thyroid, circulation and more. (you can add on a whole bunch of more specific tests too, for additional fees, like £49 for a bowel cancer risk check). To my mind, knowledge is power, and it stops me worrying. A rogue mole has also been checked and I’m waiting on a second opinion before potentially getting it removed (The Mole Clinic with branches across the UK offers single mole inspections for £50).

I’m also on the brink of signing up to a gym for the first time again in twenty years. I struggled to open a pickle jar the other day and feeling weak did not feel good. I’m prepared to admit it’s time for the sort of load-bearing exercising we’re told to prioritise in order to ward off osteoporosis.

To my mind, good health is an investment, not an expense. Bearing in mind that my natural inclination, like many of us I’m sure, is to ignore and carry on in the hope that ‘things’ will just go away. But then I worry, and the ensuing anxiety is worse than simply finding out the truth — dismissing the worry, or enabling you to take action. Doing nothing rarely engenders good outcomes.