Exercise can be key to boosting health - including after treatment
Sometimes we say one thing but mean something slightly different.
I am not talking about going the whole way like the society in George Orwell’s famous novel Nineteen Eighty-four where the Ministry of Truth was really the ministry of lies.
What I am meaning is only seeing part of the picture.
For example, when we talk about health services what we often mean is services that treat us when we are sick and when we need brought back to health, rather than what keeps us healthy in the first place.
When the National Health Service was set up more than 75 years ago the intention was to work towards a healthier society where fewer people would need medical and nursing care.
That idea was never likely to work, especially with the advances of medical technologies and the ability to tackle more and more diseases.
We live longer and healthier lives for the most part than those of our age in 1948, but the National Health Service rapidly came to be much more of a national sickness service.
Yet health and sickness are intimately bound together, and we need to deal with both.
Fixing health problems is a vital activity but we need to make sure that this is combined with a focus on improving health and preventing further illness.
So, for example, if someone has a fractured hip and that is fixed with an operation it is important that every effort is made to prevent falling in the future and another hip fracture.
I was reminded to write about the connection between treating illness and improving health by a recent news report. This commented on a research study that showed how a programme of exercise can improve the survival after surgery and chemotherapy for colon cancer.
Exercise is well known to be of great benefit to health and if it were a new drug, it would have headlines across the world.
But this is a new example of how a combination of medical treatment and healthy activity can work together to give the best outcomes.
It is not just after treatment either where exercise and other ways to improve our health matter.
Before we have treatment, we can focus on our health and wellbeing too.
Keeping fit and other ways of staying healthy, especially giving up smoking, will give us the greatest opportunity to have the best outcomes while waiting for surgery.
Combining prevention with treatment is the best prescription.
Dr Tim Allison is NHS Highland’s director public health and policy.
