40 per cent of NHS costs go on treating preventable conditions – such as diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol. The burden of just one preventable disease – cardiovascular disease – costs society over £18 billion each year. Further, 63.5% of the nation is now classified as overweight or obese, according to the NHS. Despite this, new research by Uniquely Health shows that nearly half (45%) of people have not weighed themselves since the last leap year and over three quarters (79%) haven’t measured their waist circumference in that time. 70% of Brits haven’t had a general health check and 73% have not monitored their heart rate in that time The survey found that not even half (49%) of UK adults believe they would be classed as ‘healthy’ by a doctor or health/wellness expert.
Findings indicate that British people may be struggling to take control of their health, due to the challenges that modern life presents – from sedentary lifestyles, longer working hours, family pressures and poor food options available to so many people. Over a fifth (22%) of respondents said that finding time is a key barrier to making changes to their health, and 9 in 10 (90%) have not tried a holistic approach, combining a healthy diet with an exercise routine, in the past four years. 76% of adults prioritise other aspects of their life, with Gen X most likely to prioritise family (57%) and millennials most likely to prioritise career (25%), over their health.
The neglect of personal health and wellbeing could mean generally lower quality of life and that something preventable goes unmanaged, leading to the need for greater investment of time and money in health in the future.
Findings indicate that British people may be struggling to take control of their health, due to the challenges that modern life presents – from sedentary lifestyles, longer working hours, family pressures and poor food options available to so many people. Over a fifth (22%) of respondents said that finding time is a key barrier to making changes to their health, and 9 in 10 (90%) have not tried a holistic approach, combining a healthy diet with an exercise routine, in the past four years. 76% of adults prioritise other aspects of their life, with Gen X most likely to prioritise family (57%) and millennials most likely to prioritise career (25%), over their health.
The neglect of personal health and wellbeing could mean generally lower quality of life and that something preventable goes unmanaged, leading to the need for greater investment of time and money in health in the future.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Well, the research that we at Uniquely Health Commission showed that people are putting
00:06 their health very far down their list of priorities and that 76% of people prioritize something
00:12 else instead. And those things are important. They're laudable things to be looking after.
00:18 It's like looking after children or elderly relatives or career. But we know that having
00:26 your health low down your priority list means that you won't be making necessarily good
00:30 exercise choices and good dietary choices. And you can only do that for so long. You
00:37 will start to fall into bad health and those bad healthy habits will have long term problems.
00:43 40% of NHS costs go on treating preventable conditions such as diabetes, hypertension
00:50 and high cholesterol. The burden of just one preventable disease, cardiovascular disease,
00:56 cost society over £18 billion a year. Further, 63.5% of the nation is now classified as overweight
01:05 or obese, according to the NHS. Lots of the conditions that we're talking
01:10 about here don't have symptoms with them. You can have high blood pressure without having
01:13 any symptoms. You can have prediabetes or even type 2 diabetes without having any symptoms
01:18 of it. And if you don't check, you don't know. Lots of us may even have inherited high cholesterol
01:24 or just have had high cholesterol since we were quite young.
01:26 Dr Jim Robinson and Sabine Hoadley, who's an exercise scientist, both work for Uniquely
01:33 Health. They are encouraging people to take private health checkups. It's a service that's
01:38 boomed in recent times and is also offered by many other companies.
01:44 Starting small and often. There's lots and lots of social media and fads and crazy crash
01:52 diets that you can do that claim that you can drop 10 kilograms in a couple of weeks.
01:56 And if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So I think being very careful and cautious
02:02 of what you read out there on the internet and through social media and start with small
02:07 sustainable habits, such as you could add it in a five minute walk at the end of your
02:12 day if it's something that you don't do already and then you can build that over time.
02:16 The neglect of personal health and well-being could mean generally lower quality of life
02:21 and that something preventable goes unmanaged, leading to the need for greater investment
02:27 of time and money in health in the future.
02:31 It's a really, really good way that you can measure trend like track trends over time.
02:35 So for example, if you're looking at your heart rate as an example, using these health
02:38 metrics and using data to improve our understanding of our own bodies and our own physiology is
02:45 really important to allowing us to see progress and to track our progress over time. And as
02:52 clinicians we're here to help you understand that data, what that data means and how that
03:00 looks in terms of your health is really important.
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