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Here’s to Your Overall Health
by Kellee Terrell
Staying fit and healthy and living well with HIV are closely related. Kellee Terrell reviews the basics.
Many people with HIV already have a lot to deal with in terms of their health—finding and sticking to an antiretroviral (ARV) regimen that suppresses the virus and dealing with the side effects of the treatment and the disease itself. As a result, it’s sometimes difficult to remember to focus on other diseases that also acutely affect our community, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, kidney disease, obesity and mental illness, to name a few.
Today, people are surviving with HIV. But with longevity comes the possibility of also experiencing other health problems, especially those related to aging. “Because many people with HIV are doing so well because of HIV drugs, they are living longer and becoming older adults,” states Kimberly Y. Smith, MD, an HIV specialist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “And as you get older, [other] health issues become more prevalent. You don’t escape them because you have HIV.”
If family history, a sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy diet, the use of antiretrovirals or many years of living with HIV have given you a greater chance of developing these diseases, don’t worry. There are practical ways to juggle both HIV and other health concerns. There are also places to go and people to lean on in order to receive emotional and spiritual guidance—no one has to go through this alone.
But real talk: In order to live long and healthy, it’s going to take the combined efforts of you and your health care providers. “The patient needs to be the controller of his or her own fate, be aware of potential problems and find a doctor or a team,” says Dr. Smith.
This Real Health Focus is aimed at addressing your whole health: HIV and all.
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