Self Care Week 2017


Self Care Week – Embracing Self Care for Life

To mark National Self Care Week, which is running from the 13 – 19 November 2017, the NHS are raising awareness of establishing support for self-care across communities, families and generations.

https://www.nhs.uk/selfcare/Pages/self-care-week-2017.aspx

More needs to be done to support everyone to look after their own health. Empowering people to self-care has many benefits for their short and long term health which is more important as people are living longer.

This year’s theme is ‘engaging and empowering people’ to look after their own health, their family’s health and aims to help individuals take control of their own health throughout their life. This includes helping people better understand how to look after any minor ailments or long-term conditions they may have and how to prevent ill health by choosing healthy options for good physical and mental wellbeing.

Here are some more simple steps to Self-Care for Life and help to prevent avoidable conditions:

  • Eat well, live well.  It is important that we get the nutrients we need and avoid excessive amounts of salt, fat and sugar to improve our diet.  Information is available from the NHS Choices website or ask your pharmacist for advice on managing your weight.
  • Move more! You don’t need to go expensive gyms, just walk the dog, play football with the kids, leave the car at home, ignore the bus, take the stairs, turn up the music and dance!!
  • Stop smoking – Is one of the biggest benefits to health.  Ask your local pharmacist about stop smoking services.
  • Sleep and relaxation.  A good night’s sleep is essential to good physical and mental wellbeing so make sure you get at least 7 hours sleep a night. We have such busy lives that we sometimes forget to take time out to relax. Find time in the day to be still and quieten your mind, holistic exercise such as yoga can also be helpful.
  • Flu vaccination – Make an appointment for your flu vaccination. It is impossible to get the flu from the flu vaccine because the adult vaccine doesn’t contain live viruses. A very small number of people experience side effects such as aching muscles, but this is simply the immune system responding to the vaccine.

Self-Care Week is running from 13th – 19th November; it is a national awareness week that focuses on embedding support for self-care across communities, families and generations. The theme this year is “Engaging and Empowering people”.

Information Resources:

http://www.selfcareforum.org/resources/self-care-leaflets/ (Self Care Forum factsheets)

http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/Fitness/Pages/Fitnesshome.aspx (NHS live well Choices)

http://www.treatyourselfbetter.co.uk/ (Treat Yourself Better website)

http://antibioticguardian.com/ (Antibiotics Guardian)

http://www.nhs.uk/staywell/ (Stay Well this Winter campaign)