Increasing numbers of us put off visiting our doctor when we start to experience symptoms of detrimental health conditions. This isn’t all too surprising. Many of us are extremely busy and just feel that we cannot fit in “unnecessary” health appointments around our hectic work schedules, social lives, and much needed time for rest, relaxation, and recuperation. However, it’s extremely important that you do book in appointments with relevant professionals as soon as you do start experiencing symptoms of health problems or conditions. This will allow them to be diagnosed and treated effectively. In many situations, you will be referred on by your general doctor to a specialist who will be able to offer more niche assistance and treatment. Here are just a few relatively common medical procedures that you could find dramatically improve your overall quality of life and wellbeing!
Visual Surgery
The majority of people will not experience sudden or dramatic changes to their vision. Instead, our vision tends to slowly and gradually deteriorate over time. This means that significant visual changes can go unnoticed for extended periods of time. This is why it’s extremely important that you visit an optician at least once every two years. This will give a professional optometrist the opportunity to identify any alterations in your vision, problems within your field of vision, or issues with the overall health of your eyes. Now, there are many visual problems that can easily be rectified with the right prescription lenses, either in the form of lenses for glasses frames or contact lenses. However, certain individuals will experience problems with the health of their eyes that requires further medical intervention. Conditions such as cataracts may be identified. This is where the lens of your eye becomes clouded, significantly affecting your ability to see. Visiting an optician and identifying warning signs of the condition or diagnosing an established condition early on will allow you to be referred for cataract surgery, which will completely rectify the issue! You can then receive specialist aftercare support too, including information regarding exercise after cataract surgery. After recovery, you would regain your sense of sight and find yourself able to recognise others faces as well as read, drive, and complete other day to day activities again.
Medical Massage
Now, we tend to associate massage with a luxury treatment that is carried out in specialist spa facilities for pure pleasure. However, medical massage can have profound health benefits for individuals suffering from a wide variety of conditions.
Deep Tissue Massage
Perhaps the most commonly carried out medical massage is a deep tissue massage. This focuses attention on problem areas or particularly stiff spots. If you try this out, your therapist will use slow, deliberate strokes, focusing intense pressure on specific muscle layers and tendons. It can relieve muscle pain as well as helping with injuries such as back sprains.
Sports Massage
If you take part in a lot of sport or intensive exercise, your muscles can become stiff, experience reduced flexibility, or find yourself injured more regularly than more sedentary individuals. A sports massage therapist will conduct a short survey of your general lifestyle, including the sports that you take part in, and then develop tailored massage to target your problem areas, prevent injury, and loosen your muscles. Massage can also be used to treat muscle strains.
Hip Replacement
Hip replacements are a larger form of surgery, but the procedure is extremely common and increasingly popular. As we age, we can experience problems with our hips, as the bones can slowly deteriorate over time. This causes stiffness, limited mobility, and other painful problems. If you are experiencing any of the following problems, you should book a consultation with your doctor for referral.
- Severe pain or stiffness of the hip joint.
- Swelling of the hip joint.
- Pain in the hip when resting or sleeping.
- Difficulty in casual tasks such as getting out of the bath.
Other treatments such as physiotherapy and steroid injections will be tried out, but if problems and pain persist, hip replacement surgery will eventually be recommended. During the surgery, an individual’s hip joint will be replaced with an artificial joint (otherwise known as a prosthesis). The surgery itself takes only around an hour to ninety minutes to complete, but it can sincerely improve your overall quality of life. Just bear in mind that you will need to rest for four to six weeks after the operation, and may require walking aids, such as a stick or frame, during this period.
If you are experiencing some sort of health problem, chances are that there is a procedure out there that can rectify the problem or at least alleviate its symptoms. So, it’s extremely important that you reach out for medical help and intervention sooner rather than later. There’s no point suffering or struggling in silence and hoping that the issue will simply go away or resolve itself, as most of the time it simply will not. The above procedures are just a few of many, but tens of thousands of people engage with them and experience a boost in their overall quality of life as a result. So, they’re definitely worth considering!