Most people go about the day-to-day business of living without much reflection. You wake up, do the things you have to do, hopefully squeeze in some time to do some stuff you enjoy, then crawl into bed to rest so you're ready for the next day of the same. Your lifestyle evolved slowly, spanning years to bring you to your present state, so everything seems normal to you. Sure you have stress, but so does everybody else. Don't accept your current condition as necessarily the best and healthiest you can achieve, and don't assume your level of stress is normal and acceptable. Check your mental and physical status gauges, so to speak, to see if your life could use a tune-up.
Step 1
Assess the life stress you currently have to deal with. The Life Events Survey, developed by psychologists Richard Rahe and Thomas Holmes, comprises a list of common and uncommon events that force you to adjust your actions. Their research suggests that demands for change cause stress. The survey lists events such as fired from work, death of a spouse, divorce, change in responsibility at work, foreclosure, change in recreation patterns, as well as other events and situations that require adjustment on your part. High scores on this test are associated with various adverse outcomes, including anxiety, depression and health problems. Go to Stress Tips and complete the survey. The website proves an interpretation of your score for you.
Step 2
Evaluate your mental health status. Whether you are dealing with life change, genetic vulnerabilities or distress from long-term, chronic stressors, your mental health can serve as a barometer of how well you are dealing with life's vagaries. If you have difficulty sleeping, feel anxious or sad, tend to overeat, have disturbing thoughts or have other symptoms of emotional distress, you can complete standardized measures that give you a numeric score and compare your responses to those of others. These tools should not be viewed as providing an accurate diagnosis, but they can help alert you to conditions that warrant further attention. Mental health screening tools can be found at Counseling Resources and Psych Central.
Step 3
Assess your overall mental, behavioral, physical health, fitness and dietary status. Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen developed the Real Age test, available online at RealAge, which estimates your so-called "real" age based on your genetics, lifestyle and medical history. Your chronological age is based on your date of birth. Your real age is an estimate of how old you are in terms of varied health status and lifestyle factors that have been found to predict longevity. Your real age, in the vernacular of Dr. Oz and Dr. Mehmet, may be older or younger than your chronological age, depending on your health and lifestyle.
To complete the Real Age test, you answer a series of questions about your medical history, physical symptoms, diet, exercise patterns, emotional symptoms, drug and alcohol use, diet, and social patterns. At the conclusion of the test, the website provides specific feedback about all these aspect of your lifestyle and current functioning, along with suggestions for what you can do to improve and prolong your life.
Tips and Warnings
- Self-administered tests do not substitute for a medical evaluation. However, they can provide useful information for your health care provider. After you take these tests, print or write down the results and discuss them with your physician.
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