Health Coaching is a suitable tool for any chosen lifestyle change. These are some of the many health problems or concerns that it might be helpful for.
Weight loss.
We now have some excellent drugs to assist with weight loss and these are game changers for many people who have had lifelong struggles with trying to loose weight. A way to enhance the effect of these drugs is to work on lifestyle changes alongside the weight loss they assist with. This does not mean ditching your favourite meals or never eating any cake again, instead it means gradually and safely increasing your movement and changing your eating habits (I promise to never make you calorie count though!).
Please see the article for more information about how health coaching might help you.
Menopause.
This, for many women, is a difficult time of life. While balancing all our usual home/work lives, our bodies and hormones cause huge imbalances effecting every aspect of our being. Now recognised as much more than the uncomfortable hot sweats, this means that it is more complex than simply replacing hormones (which not every woman wants or is suitable for).
Health Coaching can help to improve your health if you’re struggling during this time to make the future healthier and happier, with or without hormone replacement therapy.
Diabetes.
Diabetes is a difficult condition. Along with the high sugars and dietary changes, the risks of side effects like sight deterioration and loss, and deterioration in kidney function due to poor insulin (?) control are real risks for many diabetics.
Working at reducing the burden on the pancreas should reduce the markers of diabetes and poor sugar control, but there are many other ways to reduce the ill effects of diabetes. Health coaching can help to make lasting sustainable lifestyle changes to reduce the risk of ill effects of diabetes.
High blood pressure and cardiac disease risk.
During my first year in my first job in a GP surgery, I helped an overweight man on three different heart medications to get off all of them over a year. He came because he was angry about all the side-effects of the medications and said ultimately, he did not want to take any. Gradually he changed his lifestyle, lost lots of weight, reduced his drinking to a safer level, increased his activity level, and we slowly reduced his medications in a safe manner until he was medication free. He took control of his medical condition, including monitoring his blood pressure, and it really paid off for him.
While not everyone will become medication free, many will reduce medications with lifestyle change: this increased control meant that he also reduced his risk of stroke and heart attacks.
General poor lifestyle.
In a few short generations, our lives have changed hugely. We are now more sedentary, more overweight and more unhealthy than we have ever been. Our life expectancy is decreasing, and the amount of years we spend living healthily is decreasing too. It is never too late to try and address this!
Health Coaching is about making your whole life healthier, including your mental and physical health. So, you don’t need to wait until there is something amiss to make best use of it, it’s as much about prevention as it is about a cure!