House Call: Healthy habits help your family during the school year

With school back in full swing, taking care of you and your family’s health can be more of a challenge. Here are some suggestions that may make it a bit easier.

Eat out less often

Frequently eating out or bringing in takeout for supper can end up adding a lot of calories to you and your family’s diets due to the large portions and high fat of restaurant food. The costs add up too. Planning nutritious meals on Saturday or Sunday for the coming week can make cooking at home easier and save money. Consider buying ingredients that are already shredded, sliced, chopped or diced to shorten the time required for food prep and make things easier on yourself. Sure, they cost a bit more, but if you are eating out less often, the cost will balance out.

Use mail order prescriptions

If you or anyone in your family has prescriptions that have to be refilled often, take advantage of mail-order pharmacy options your health insurance offers. Sometimes automatic refills are available. Mail order pharmacies may offer a discount for using their services. My wife and I make notes on the calendar on our phones to remind us when it is time to order refills.

Know your care options

Make sure you know what your health-care options are and the hours they are available. It’s valuable to know which urgent care facilities are covered by your insurance and the hours the nurse helpline is available. This can help you avoid time consuming and costly trips to the emergency room.

Stay ahead

Take the time to get yourself and your family in for annual checkups or wellness visits. When you have a relationship and rapport with your primary healthcare provider, you will feel more confident about using services that some providers offer such as emailing questions or phone appointments, which can be time and money saving alternatives to an office visit.

Prevent illness

Getting a cold or the flu can derail any schedule. Get your flu shot. Practice good hygiene such as washing or sanitizing your hands. If you do get sick, do your best to stay home and stay away from others so that you lower the risk of spreading illness.

Prioritize fitness

Find ways to get more exercise into your schedule. Maybe bring a sack lunch to work and use part of your lunch break for walking and part for eating. Park farther from work so that you get more walking in. Take the stairs. Walk or bike to work if you can.

Get your rest

Make sure that you get enough sleep. Busy schedules will tempt you to stay up later and get up earlier. It is impossible to feel well without enough sleep. Most people need seven or better yet eight hours of sleep to feel their best. Young people need even more. Limiting caffeine and alcohol will help you sleep better, so avoid the temptation to deal with fatigue with more caffeine and stress with more alcohol.

Prioritize what’s important

Free up some time for things that matter to you. Make a list of things that are most important to you and have each member of your family do so as well. These often turn out to be family, health, community, exercise, and things like that. If there are activities in you and your family’s schedules that aren’t in line with what is really important to you, consider stopping or cutting back on the time you spend doing them, so you can devote more time to the things that matter to you.

The healthier and happier you can keep yourself and your family, the better you will all feel every day.