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“Good Health Often Isn’t Valued Until We Lose It.”
“Good Health Often Isn’t Valued Until We Lose It.”How true is this?
I was only sixteen years old when my health started playing up and the first symptoms of Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism plagued my life. So I can barely remember what it felt like to be completely healthy!
But being in good health now with my thyroid condition well managed (and Hashimoto’s in remission), it only takes a flare up day to remind me of how bad it has been before.
It’s not until good health is taken from us, something that so many people take for granted, that we realise just how important it is. More important than anything else, even. My auntie once said to me “If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything,” and only after developing chronic health conditions did I realise how true this was.
Without good health, I wasn’t able to maintain employment, my mental health took a nose dive, relationships became strained and I simply did not enjoy life.
So value your good health days and value your health enough to commit to looking after it so you can have way more good than bad days. Commit to advocating for yourself and improving your health if you don’t have many good health days right now.
It can be frustrating to see those around us not valuing their health perhaps as well as we would do if we knew before what we know now, but everything shapes us. Being our own advocate is the best thing we can all do.
What do you think? Is good health only truly valued once we know what it’s like to live with not-so-good health?
Written by Rachel, The Invisible Hypothyroidism
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Rachel Hill is the highly ranked and award-winning thyroid patient advocate, writer, blogger, speaker and author behind The Invisible Hypothyroidism. She has two books: ‘Be Your Own Thyroid Advocate‘ and ‘You, Me and Hypothyroidism‘. Her thyroid advocacy work includes writing, speaking on podcasts and co-creating Thoughtful Thyroid courses. Rachel has worked with The National Academy of Hypothyroidism, BBC, The Mighty, Yahoo, MSN, ThyroidChange and more. She is well-recognised as a useful contributor to the thyroid community and has received eight 2019 WEGO Health Award Nominations.