RESET YOUR HEALTH FOR 2018
A new year can mean a new you if you’re ready to hit the reset button
With a brand new year waiting in the wings, what better time to flip the focus and take stock of your own health and well-being? For many of us, life rushes by at lightning speed, with our energies directed at our external selves: career, family, friends and endless commitments all require us to give ‘til it hurts. Most people run on empty and don’t notice until something in their health goes sideways, or they look in the mirror and hardly recognize the person they’ve become.
2018 can be your year—if you’re ready to hit the reset button. Today, private healthcare facilities offer impressive targeted programs, new technology is a game changer, and cosmetic procedures are refined.
Ever wondered what is really going on inside your body, from head to toe, especially once you reach a certain age? For some, that’s around 40, for others 50, but sooner or later we’re acutely aware that big changes are happening in the body. Having a team of medical experts do a complete work-up and collectively analyze the results to optimize a personal health regimen may sound like a privilege of the super elite, but that’s no longer the case.
For instance, Copeman Healthcare offers a Comprehensive Health Assessment that includes screening, diagnostic tests and consultations based on the findings of your medical, fitness and dietary needs.
Les Jickling, senior marketing and communications director at Copeman Healthcare, says “the thing that makes CHA innovative is that typically (in the public healthcare system) you see a care provider and expect that person to be all things to you. If you truly want to drive wellness, you have to modify lifestyle, manage your weight, eat and sleep well, exercise and manage stress. We developed a model where we take the physician, dietician, kinesiologist and family health nurses and build a plan for our clients’ specific needs.” The program provides for annual assessments for patients.
“There are two types of prevention — primary and secondary,” Jickling says. “Primary is about building resilience and lifestyle modification to deter or delay illness, he says. “Secondary is about early detection, catching issues when they are most treatable. The difference is between being proactive and reactive. Why would you wait until there is a problem? You take your car in for a tune-up every year, and some people are spending more on their car maintenance than health.”
The Westcoast Women’s Clinic, meantime, is a private clinic in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood geared to the hormonal health of women. Kavita Verma, owner of both this clinic and Balance Medical Centre, which she says “tackles a host of other issues such as auto-immunity, gastrointestinal dysfunction, genetic mutations and pain management.” Come 2018, both practices will be under one roof as Verma explains, many of these health issues for women occur in tandem, and a team of experts, including naturopathic physicians, can offer a more rounded picture of a client’s health status and how to treat it.
To that end, Westcoast Women’s Clinic does comprehensive testing to gain information that goes deep, as menopause is complex and the experience is different from woman to woman. Treatment is individualized, depending on a number of factors, while natural options for hormonal medicines are available as well.
Elsewhere, Lougheed Laser Centre in Burnaby offers ‘Cool Sculpting,’ a technology “designed for non-surgical, non-invasive fat reduction used primarily in the abdomen and love handles.” Cool Sculpting freezes fat cells, which are then permanently removed by the body naturally, and is used on thighs, chin, knees and in the bra area.
Back at Copeman Healthcare, a new at-home monitoring system for Type 1 diabetes has been launched. Copeman kinesiologist Dana Filkow of Copeman Health Care has been trialing it herself, and is very impressed. Called Libre, the glucose-monitoring system doesn’t require the user to prick a finger.
“You use Libre at home and administer the sensor yourself,” Filkow says. “In the past, you poke your finger, put the blood on a test strip, but this system you wear on your arm for two weeks. It doesn’t come off, it’s sweat and waterproof, then you use a handheld monitor that you swipe over the sensor, and measure your glucose level or blood sugar. I met with my endocrinologist, who had not had a patient on it, so I was educating her on how this thing works – which is super cool.”
New year. New you. Truly attainable.
You take your car in for a tune-up every year, and some people are spending more on their car maintenance than health.