How to prevent health problems in teenagers

The core of youth health prevention is never to urgently fix the leaks when something goes wrong, but to integrate health awareness into the details of daily life, food, clothing, housing, transportation, and education. By focusing on the physical and psychological dimensions early, more than 80% of common health problems among teenagers can be avoided.

In the past two years, I have been doing health follow-up for teenagers in the community, and I have met too many families who have gone astray. The one that impressed me the most was a boy in the second grade of junior high school. His weight had reached 200 pounds at the age of 14, and his blood pressure was at the critical value for three consecutive physical examinations. His parents used to make him stew soup to nourish his brain every day. They were afraid of delaying his homework when picking him up from school and even going downstairs to buy a bottle of water. It was not until he fainted on the playground after running 800 meters in the last physical examination that he rushed to ask how to deal with it. To be honest, intervention at this stage is already many times more difficult than early prevention.

There is a lot of quarrel on the Internet about this matter now. Some people say that the whole responsibility lies with the school. It takes up physical education classes and dragging classes at every turn, and the children don’t even have time to do activities.； Some people also say that the root cause lies in the family. Parents watch short videos while eating at home, stay up late to play games, and the children follow the same pattern. The schedules and diets are completely messed up. In fact, it makes no sense to blame who is responsible. Health prevention requires the cooperation of both the school and the family. Without either side, it will be difficult to achieve success. There are still many elders who still think that "children are just fat and fat because they are well-raised". When children say they are in a bad mood, they think they are "hypocritical and making excuses not to go to school." This actually narrows the definition of health. The World Health Organization has long made it clear that health is a state of complete physical, mental and social adaptability. It does not mean that there is no fever or cough, or there is nothing wrong with it. Just like a junior high school girl who came for consultation last month. She initially told her mother that she had trouble sleeping and didn't want to go to school. Her mother directly scolded her for "just wanting to be lazy." It took more than two months to find knife marks on her arms before she rushed to see a psychiatrist. In fact, if she had sat down and listened to her talk about school for ten more minutes at the beginning, she would not have reached this point.

It’s actually not that complicated to do it. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to buy some brain-boosting health care products, and you don’t have to make any rigorous health plans. You can take your child downstairs for a twenty-minute walk after dinner on weekdays. Don’t schedule too many training classes on weekends, and leave half a day for him to play ball or go shopping with his classmates. It’s better than anything else. If you find that your child's appetite has increased or decreased recently, he has not slept well for a week or two in a row, and his grades have dropped significantly, ask a few more questions and don't criticize him. If you eliminate many small problems when they first arise, they will not develop into big troubles.

To put it bluntly, health prevention for teenagers is like raising saplings. You can’t wait for the leaves to turn yellow and the roots to rot before you think of watering and fertilizing. Pay more attention to the dryness and moisture of the soil, and move to a sunny place to get some air. Then you can naturally grow taller and taller. You spend all your time on small things, and there are not so many mysterious ways.