Staying healthy is an ideal goal for everyone. However, the steps you need to take to stay healthy vary from person to person. For women in minority groups, the steps need to address the specific issues they deal with.
This article will explore some of the best ways women in minority groups can stay healthy. Keep reading to find out six effective strategies.
1. Start Eating Right
It is easy for many women to fall into a poor diet. Relying on fast food when you don’t have enough time to cook for yourself is easy but is far from nutritious. Meanwhile, fasting to lose weight will hurt your body overall.
In addition, cultural issues make it difficult to eat right. Simply consuming the typical Western diet can increase your health risk. Plus, people in lower socioeconomic groups tend only to have access to unhealthy foods. Knowing what to avoid and what to look for can help.
For many years, people were taught to avoid fat at all costs. However, avoiding sugar appears to have an even more positive impact on health. Alongside these, avoiding fried and heavily processed foods makes it easier to stick to a healthy diet.
Instead of all this, try to incorporate plenty of fruits and vegetables, particularly dark green leafy vegetables, into your diet. Alongside these, include foods that will provide you with necessary levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which are an often overlooked part of nutrition. Foods high in omega-3s include many types of fish, like salmon and nuts.
2. Stay Active
Physical activity is an important part of staying healthy. The CDC recommends 150 minutes of physical activity each week.
However, for many people, this is just too much. They don’t have the time in their schedules to fit in that much physical activity. In this case, something is better than nothing. Even if you can only fit in 5 minutes of activity each day, it will help you more than doing nothing will. This is especially true if this minimal amount of physical activity is paired with a healthy diet.
You can even choose to incorporate regular bouts of physical activity as part of your day. A quick jog from your parking spot to the store or a few leg lifts while lying down will add some more strenuous activity to your day without affecting it much.
Related: DDW: Lower Risk for Obesity-Linked Cancer Seen With Bariatric Surgery
3. Take Time to Rest
There is often an overwhelming pressure on women to be as strong and determined as possible. Particularly in minority communities, women are expected to be “strong” and serve as the backbone of a family dynamic.
However, this ideal is a lot to live up to. Simply having it hanging over your head is stressful enough. Meanwhile, the increase in your workload caused by it makes things even worse.
That is why it is important to recognize that rest is an essential part of staying strong. Without periods of rest, your physical and mental health will deteriorate. You will find you aren’t able to keep up with the same pace and find that most activities stress you out more than they previously did.
Sleep is of particular importance. You might think that skipping out on a few hours of sleep to focus on chores will help you in the long run. However, that reduction in sleep comes with an increased risk of stroke and various other health problems. If you’re struck down by any of these, you will end up spending far more time and money on recovery than you would have spent on sleep in the first place.
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4. See a Doctor Regularly
It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of regularly seeing a doctor. Regular checkups and health screenings are an important part of staying healthy overall.
A big part of this is because regular doctor visits can catch harmful issues before they have a chance to get worse. Catching some types of cancer early gives dramatically better odds of survival than catching them later on. Your doctor can even let you know if you are starting to develop a health problem so that you can make changes to prevent it from getting worse.
A visit with a doctor can even improve your quality of life. For example, women suffering from chronic migraines may believe that there is nothing they can do to help their condition. However, new methods of dealing with migraine pain are always in development. You never know when a visit with your doctor will lead to you receiving a new form of treatment that helps you manage your condition.
Related: Racial Disparity in the Diagnosis of Skin Cancers
5. Avoid High-Risk Activities
An easy way to stay healthy is to avoid activities that present a high risk to your health. Smoking, excessive drinking, and drug use are all hazards that have long-term effects.
The positives that come from quitting these are plentiful. Quitting smoking will lead to an immediate increase in your lung’s ability to work properly and will prevent you from experiencing many long-term health problems. Cutting back on alcohol has numerous benefits that range from losing weight to saving money. Finally, quitting drugs will generally improve your health and avoid many of the potential dangers that come with long-term drug use.
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6. Minimize Sun Exposure
Many women with darker skin believe that sun exposure isn’t a big deal. However, this simply isn’t true. People of color can experience skin conditions from the sun, similar to people with fair skin.
In fact, people of color may be more at risk in some cases. Issues like melanoma are often not caught in people with darker skin until the issue has progressed further. So, staying protected is even more important.
Luckily, there are simple steps to take to avoid sun exposure. Applying sunscreen when going outside is one obvious step. However, sun hats or other coverups work just as well, if not better. On top of this, avoiding the sun at the most dangerous time of day, 10 AM to 2 PM, helps protect the skin.
Health Tips for Women in Minority Groups
Being healthy is a choice for everyone. Diet, exercise, rest, visits with a doctor, and avoiding dangerous activities are all great ways to stay healthy. These can help all women in minority groups to live a better, more healthy life.
Related: What Are the Most Common Skin Conditions Affecting African Americans?
