When Tots100 asked for bloggers to find out more about their health and speak to a health professional about changed they could make, I jumped at the chance!
Patient.co.uk is a website designed to help identify potential health problems and give you access to documents that will give you information on your condition alongside practical advise. Certainly better than lugging a dozen leaflets home for the surgery!
You can also take the patient survey to see how healthy you really are by filling in answers to the generic questions and then giving you a score at the end which falls at certain levels. It takes about 15 minutes and is very easy to read and understand.
When I went to take the survey I hadn’t realised is that I had actually signed up to the website before, although I couldn’t remember doing it. My score at that point was 68, but at the time of filling it in I was pregnant and things have changed so I had to amend some answers.
Using the details from your health assessment, they are able to calculate your current Patient Q Score. Your score represents your relative risk of experiencing heart disease and illness by placing you in an imaginary queue of 100 people.
A score below 20 means you should be seeking further assessment from your doctor – whereas a score of 60 or more indicates that you’re generally within healthy limits. If it’s the ideal you’re looking for then you should aim for the Optimum Patient Q Score range of 90 to 100!
This time my score was 58 and a drop of 10 points, which puts me in the Transformation category, however I am just two points of being back in the healhty category.
The website has given me some goals to set and I have chosen moderate changes to ease me into the program. My main focus is eating healthily again and getting some better exercise and I have chosen to review my targets in one month. You can choose lots of timescales, so if you have a target date that is closer or farther away you can adjust it and they will send you emails accordingly.
I have also signed up for a 12 week plan for exercise, diet and weight loss which is all completely free. There are lots of tips about eating healthily
I was phoned by the Dr Sarah Jarvis, who was dashing for a train to York at the time when the phone rang, and I had a grumbly baby so the first couple of minutes were quite amusing. Once we were both settled we had a lovely chat and she gave me some suggestions to try and improve my health.
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| Dr Sarah Jarvis |
She was surprised to learn I had 6 children and breastfed them all until at least 2 years of age. She warned me that because of this I am at risk of osteoporosis and because my mum is a suffer has advised that I take vitamin D supplements daily as well as ensuring that I keep my dairy / calcium intake up!
I have been worried about exercising after my ceasarian but she has reassured me that any pain in my scar is merely the nerves starting to reattach themselves and not damage. I go swimming once a week with Sebastian but she has advised that high impact sports would be better to strengthen my bones.
I did explain I did a lot of walking with the children but sadly it doesn’t seem to count as I rarely go at such a pace to get out of breath.
After being accused of being pregnant this week I also know I am overweight. I am struggling with eating healthily as I eat late with hubby when he gets home from work (about 9pm) and am often tired from the kids waking through the night and so crave chocolate. I am not going to torture myself by dieting at Christmas but I do intend to start a new healthy eating regime in the new year and have set a target weightloss of a stone by February half term.
This sounds great! I’m going to do it now good luck with your healthy eating goals in 2014 x
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