Health and wellness can change how we manage long term neurological conditions

What is it about?

Health and wellness, the way we live a healthy lifestyle both physically and mentally, can make a big difference to the way we experience illness and long term conditions. There is a lot of evidence now that shows the food we eat, the way we move and exercise, the amount we sleep and how we manage stress can all have an affect on how we manage neurological conditions like MS, Parkinson's, Huntingdon's, epilepsy and more. This article puts lots of that evidence into one place, helping to show how making small changes to how we live can improve how we feel. It gives evidenced ideas for ways that clinicians can help their patients, and patients can help themselves, to feel as well as possible for as long as possible.

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Why is it important?

Our NHS is under a lot of pressure to help people who are living for longer with more and more health conditions. Many people have more than one long-term health condition. At the same time, new evidence shows that they way we live and the experiences we have make it more likely that we will develop a long term condition like dementia, diabetes or cardiovascular disease. Things like how much we move and exercise, and whether we feel lonely or depressed, have a direct link to whether we will develop these conditions. It is very important that we all take our own health seriously, and that we use the way we live to improve our health, rather than to make us feel ill, or worsen our health problems.

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