[Infographic] How to Protect Your Family's Future from Critical Illnesses

29 March 2019

How to Live a Worry-Free Life While Working Abroad

One of the many things that will keep you up at night once you become a parent is worrying about your family’s safety. While you can make yourself paranoid thinking about how your family is keeping safe while you are abroad, things that most people fear, like violence or accidents, don’t even fall in the top 10 causes of deaths in the Philippines. Taking care of your own health while you are away from them is probably the most commonsense thing you can do to safeguard your family.

If you are not around to provide for your family, then who will do it? Not only can serious illness take you away from your family permanently, it may make you unable to work and provide for them. Dealing with huge medical expenses can also be financially devastating, impacting the wellbeing and future stability of your loved ones.

The number one thing you can do to ensure you’re around to care for your family in the future and support them for a long time—while also protecting them from high medical bills—is to safeguard your own health. Thankfully, making some lifestyle changes can go a long way.

Manage Lifestyle Diseases
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like heart disease, stroke, cancer, some lung diseases and diabetes are the top killers and causes of illness among Filipinos. While it’s unfortunate that these are on the rise, the good news is that most of them can be managed through lifestyle changes.

NCDs are not passed around through bacteria or viruses, and even if genetics makes you more susceptible to them they are not actually hereditary. Adjusting your habits to live a healthier lifestyle can significantly lessen the chances that you will get one of these NCDs, or can reverse their course if you already have them.
Eat a Healthy Diet
A diet high in added sugars, unhealthy fat and cholesterol, and full of chemical additives like preservatives is directly related to heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes.

Many diets can be considered healthy, but a proven one is the Mediterranean Diet. It’s rich in healthy fats, fish, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and seeds, and it fits in well with the kind of foods Filipinos would traditionally eat before Western practices impacted our eating habits with processing techniques, canned goods, and fast food.

And if you don’t want to follow a specific diet, then these basic guidelines will help you eat healthier: cook your own food using fresh ingredients, avoid packaged and processed foods, and eat lots of fruits and vegetables.
Exercise Regularly
Getting enough physical activity makes your heart and bones stronger, improves your mood by releasing endorphins, and it gets more oxygen flowing through your body. So even if you will never look like a supermodel, or are already at a healthy weight, it’s still important to get moving.

Joining a gym, signing up for classes and getting professional advice are all good places to start. And even small changes in daily habits like parking farther from your destination, or getting up and walking around the office at regular intervals can make a difference.
Manage Stress
People tend to think of stress as a “mental health” thing, but chronic stress can also be linked to higher rates of illnesses like heart disease, stroke, asthma, diabetes and obesity.

Being in a constant state of stress causes cortisol and other hormones to flow through your body. When you really need these hormones, such as when you need to fight or flee, they are beneficial in helping you respond to danger. But when you don’t need them, they do damage to many bodily systems. Meditation, deep breathing and regular exercise—as well as cutting down on the sources of stress in your life, of course—can all help calm your body.
Drink Less and Stop Smoking
Of all the bad habits you can change, drinking less and stopping smoking will be some of the most important. Chronic heavy drinking is linked to heart disease, cancer, stroke, and kidney disease; while smoking is linked to cancer, lung disease, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

While an occasional drink is fun and can even be healthy, if drinking has reached the level of addiction, it’s best to stop completely. And everyone should quit smoking, period. It affects not only your health, but the health of your loved ones because the toxic substances from cigarette smoke stick to your clothes and last in your home long after you stop smoking. Fighting both temptations is a difficult battle, but there are many resources online that can help.
Get Enough Sleep
Lack of sleep is becoming more and more prevalent as people struggle to make ends meet, and modern technologies keep you awake at all hours. But sleep is necessary for more than feeling good during the day. Not getting enough sleep is directly linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Try to get between seven to nine hours of sleep each night. If you are someone who has trouble sleeping, try creating a bedtime ritual, avoid alcohol and caffeine later in the day, make your bed a sleep-only zone, and stay away from screens as you get close to bedtime.
Protect Your Family
Unfortunately, we can make all the right choices in the world, and illness may still strike. Family Care Plus, a life insurance plan for two, provides insurance against both loss of life and 10 critical illnesses, including disability due to illness. If, despite all your efforts, one of these health events should affect you or your partner, then your family will receive payments that will help them to figure out finances or pay for healthcare to treat the illness.

Family Care Plus is also powered by AIA Vitality, a science-backed wellness program which will help encourage you on your path to live healthier, longer, better lives. AIA Vitality tracks your health, provides incentives to improve your lifestyle, boosts your plan's benefits and helps you save with our many partner brands.

To know more about Family Care Plus and AIA Vitality, visit any BPI branch and speak to a Bancassurance Sales Executive.

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[Infographic] How to Protect Your Family's Future from Critical Illnesses

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