”Health Problems That Creep Up On You” is a collaborative post and includes affiliate links. Please see the disclosure page for more information. Disclaimer – always verify medical information with your doctor or a professional and follow all laws for your location.
When you get the flu or break a leg, it’s pretty obvious what’s wrong and that you need immediate medical attention. But most health problems tend to develop slowly over time. Initially, symptoms are barely noticeable. And with time, you adapt to them, unconsciously minimizing their effect on your life. Eventually, though, you reach a breaking point where you can no longer put the problem off, particularly when you lose function.
Unfortunately, once you get to this stage, it could be too late. If only you’d dealt with the problem earlier, perhaps you could have managed it better. Take a look at these health problems that creep up on you slowly. Please make sure that you’re aware of the signs.
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Cardiovascular Issues
The cardiovascular system comprises the heart and all the blood vessels scattered throughout the body. It is an impressive, living, moving system that expands and contracts with every beat.
Cardiovascular problems, however, tend to develop early in life. Teenagers on western diets usually have fatty streaks in their blood vessels, indicating the earliest stages of atherosclerosis. Over time, these develop into larger plaques. And by the time most people hit sixty, they’re big enough to flake off and cause an embolism.
Obviously, you don’t want that. Therefore, the best strategy is to keep your cholesterol in the safe range – preferably below 150 mg/dL. This level appears to protect almost everyone from strokes and heart disease. How to do this? Well, a friend of mine has had high blood pressure for over a year now and her doctor told her to go almost vegetarian. No processed foods and three small palm sized amounts of meat a week (fish, poultry, or pork chops). I don’t know if this is the answer but it’s well worth the idea of researching. Talk with your doctor about how to best combat cardiovascular issues.
Hearing Loss
Hearing loss is an insidious condition that develops slowly. It is hard to detect because you don’t know what you can’t hear. In the past, for instance, when your hearing was better, you might have been able birds chirping outside the window in the morning. Hearing loss could prevent you from detecting that, but you’d never know. You could just assume that the birds are no longer there. Or maybe like me you realized your hearing is worse off than you thought since everyone started wearing masks. I had no idea how much I’ve been relying on lip reading to “hear” what other people are saying until recently.
People who don’t catch the condition early can go on to develop severe hearing loss. An inability to detect incoming sounds leads to a negative feedback loop. Lack of stimulation of the nerve fibers causes parts of the brain responsible for interpreting noises to atrophy. Eventually, they become less able to process incoming signals, and the whole system starts to fail.
You can, however, control hearing loss by wearing hearing aids. Again, talk with your doctor and find out the steps to take for hearing aids or other means of improving your hearing. If you think this is going to be a suitable option for you then looking into other matters associated with hearing aids could prove useful, such as answering popular questions like are hearing aids tax deductible? Thankfully, most of your questions might be answered online to help you decide on the best steps for you. 
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Diabetes
Diabetes is a condition that develops when the body can’t produce enough insulin to remove sugar from the blood. High glucose levels in the bloodstream can cause enormous damage to certain parts of the body, including the eyes, kidneys, and brain in extreme cases. Type 2 is prevalent in my family. This is something that we could prevent with a proper diet. (If only my mom didn’t cook so darn good!) So this is something that is always in the back of mind to look out for.
Diabetes, though, is an invisible disease. Usually, the first sign you have a severe problem on your hands is unexplained weight loss. Your cells can’t take up sugar from the bloodstream, so you wind up peeing it out. People first diagnosed diabetes by actually tasting the urine of patients, realizing that it was sweet. Gross right?! Thank goodness for modern medicine!
Preventing diabetes is relatively simple: just avoid junk food and make animal products a small part of your diet. Focus on whole foods, as they come out of the ground, for metabolic health. I know easier said than done but here’s a tip – only bring in the following food in your home… vegetables, fruits, beans, nonprocessed foods, and whatever else your doctor says to do. Yep, it’s going to turn your pantry on it’s head. But if you do not want to have to worry about developing diabetes symptoms start with what you put in your body.
Mental Health
I’m so thankful to live in a time where it’s ok to talk about mental health. When my parents were young, people didn’t talk about depression or being biopolar or hormonal imbalance. There wasn’t as much research as now.
When my dad was a kid he remembers his mom(a nurse) telling him about a patient one day after her shift. She said the woman had given birth and then next day ran as fast as she could down the hall, jumped through a second story window, and fell to her death. If mental health had more attention back in the day rather than just putting people in a institution maybe this wouldn’t had happened.
Postpartum depression is real. Hormonal imbalance is real. And so many other mental health issues are real and thank goodness are treatable! It is so important that you not only look after your physical health but your mental health as well. Find a doctor that can guide you through options like medication, counseling, life coaching, addiction recovery, and more. According to the National Mental Health Institute, “Nearly one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (46.6 million in 2017).”
You are not alone.
Regular checkups with your doctor are so important and recommended testing depending on your age is also so important. I have another friend that recently had a colonoscopy and they found cancer at the beginning stages. If he had put this off or never had this checkup done, then he could have been gone very quickly. Thankfully with developments in treating cancer, he has a good long life ahead of him. Be sure to talk with your doctor and go to your regular checkups and hopefully you can keep away the health problems that creep up on you.
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If you are feeling down or depressed for more days than not, please seek medical attention. If you are feeling like you cannot go on, please call the suicide hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or chat here>>> https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat/ Or visit the suicide prevention lifeline at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
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