Helping You Find Healthy

Now that January is over it is time to reassess your new year’s resolutions. How are they going? Did you complete a dry January, return to the gym or overhaul your eating habits?

It’s easy to let these things slide and revert back to bad habits but luckily Bupa has created a range of fantastic tools, apps and devices that help you to find healthy well in to 2013.

Burgeoning with quizzes, calculators and in-depth advice, the Bupa find healthy website can really help you to steer a course to a healthy you this year. Their calculators will run a health check with you, give you a report and provide recommendations for changes that you can make to lower your risks.

Ranging from a Health Age Calculator to a Physical Activity Quiz and a tool focused on sensible drinking, these find healthy applications cover a wide range of topics and health queries that many of us have on a daily basis. You can assess your own health, enabling you to reduce a risk of illness, and find out more about a variety of common conditions and issues like stress, sleep problems, and giving up smoking. Bupa also provide cancer risk assessments, augmented by a wealth of information and advice on their Cancer Health tab; this can be found by going through Bupa’s “A-Z Health Info Directory” tool, helping users to navigate the whole scope of their health information.

Particularly useful are the Bupa content information sheets that offer helpful advice for things such as nutrition and helping you set up running programmes (though if you have been heavy on the booze and cigarettes so far this year, you might want to check out the information on drinking or their cost of smoking calculator!)

BUPA Here is some of their advice for reducing stress and sleeping better:

Lowering Stress

To reduce stress in your life you can:

Manage your time more effectively and prioritise more important jobs first.
Adopt a healthy lifestyle – eat a balanced diet, rich in fruit and vegetables, and make sure you get enough sleep.
Know your limitations – don’t take on too much.
Find out what causes you to feel stressed and try to change your thoughts and behaviour to reduce it – talking things over with a friend or a family member can help.
Try not to get into situations that make you feel angry or upset.
Accept the things you can’t change and concentrate on the things you have control over.
Make time for the activities you enjoy and for the things that make you feel relaxed – you’re more likely to neglect this area of your life if you’re stressed.
Find time to meet friends and have fun – arrange to do something you enjoy.
Develop a positive thinking style – try to look at a problem differently or discuss it with someone.
Don’t drink too much alcohol or caffeine, or use illegal drugs as a way to cope – in the long term, these things will only make you feel worse.
Complimentary therapies such as learning relaxation techniques, massage and aromatherapy to promote a sense of wellbeing and provide a relaxing environment that helps you unwind, can also be helpful

Sleeping Well

Getting a better night’s sleep makes everyone feel better. Here are some of their top tips for sleeping well:

Sleep hygiene – make sure your bedroom is a comfortable and relaxing place
Good routine – establish a regular bedtime routine going to bed and getting up at the same time every day.
reduce stress levels – see above
exercise regularly
If you eat sugary foods or a heavy meal too late at night, it can also affect how well you sleep, so try having your main meal earlier in the day

They also provide some fun Bupa apps for iPads, iPhones and Android devices, such as the Brainy App with lots of brain games to keep your mind active and the Fitness App to help reach your workout goals.

With wellbeing so crucial, Bupa’s free tools give you the convenience of checking aspects of your own health through a range of interactive applications, safe in the knowledge that the information is from a trusted leader. The extensive selection of services covers many aspects of life, giving you advice for exercise programmes and providing fitness regimes that help to improve fitness levels – and, as a result, your health.