Blog: Taking care of yourself from the inside

Leading a healthy lifestyle is about more than just looking good on the outside; you need to be healthy on the inside too.

Do we think enough about how being overweight, drinking too much or our smoking habits, damages our internal organs?

Regularly drinking to excess increases your risk of serious illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver and heart disease.  These illnesses could lead to you needing an organ transplant, so keeping your organs healthy throughout your life is important.

Make a fist – this is roughly the size of your heart.  Arguably, this organ is the most hardworking in your body.  But being overweight, smoking and drinking too much puts your heart under excessive strain, making its job harder than necessary.

Last year, 4,212 people received an organ transplant.  Although some of these are unavoidable, leading a healthy lifestyle helps to prevent damage to your organs and, in turn, may prevent you needing transplantation in the future.

We can all take responsibility for our health and ensure that we are enhancing our quality of life by being more active, eating better and making better choices around alcohol and smoking.

You can make a difference to the health of your heart and other organs by making simple lifestyle changes.  For healthy lifestyle advice go to www.healthyshropshire.co.uk where you’ll find links to information on healthy eating, physical activity, drugs and alcohol and many more.  You can also call the Healthy Shropshire helpline on 0345 678 9025.

Organ Donation survey

Shropshire Council is running a survey on organ donation in Shropshire.  The aim of the research is to find out if people in the county are in favour of the current opt-in policy (where you must sign up to the organ donation register), or if they are in favour of an opt-out policy (everyone is automatically signed up to the register and you must choose to take yourself off the register).

Your views are really important and will help to shape the future of organ donation.  The online survey is very short (it will take less than five minutes to complete) and runs until 30 June 2014.  You can take part by clicking here.