Are You Ready for Know Your Numbers Week?

What is Know Your Numbers Week?

September 6th to September 12th 2021 is Know Your Numbers week across the UK. Know Your  Numbers week is one of the biggest health awareness days in the UK and is focused on helping everyday people understand their current health levels by getting them to discover what there core health numbers are.

What are the numbers that people should know about?

There are a variety of numbers that can help us identify what parts of our lives needs changing to maximise our health, but the most common ones are:

Blood pressure

Suffering from high blood pressure, or hypertension can often go unnoticed as it generally has no visible symptoms.  However, it can have a significant impact and lead to strokes or heart attack, so it’s important to get it checked regularly.

But what is your blood pressure reading and what does it mean?  It consists of two numbers, 140 over 80 for example.  The first is your ‘systolic’ pressure, which is the pressure of your blood as it leaves the heart.  The second is your ‘diastolic’ pressure, which is the pressure of your blood between heartbeats.

Both figures are important if either is consistently high it can increase your risk of a stroke or heart attack

Cholesterol

We all know that high cholesterol is bad for you, but do we know why?  High cholesterol can block up your arteries, which can then lead to heart disease, heart attacks, strokes or kidney diseases.  Which are all things we want to avoid.

Blood glucose

Diabetes can often go undiagnosed; in fact it’s reported that up to one million people in the UK have undiagnosed diabetes. A blood glucose test is the first step for a diabetes diagnosis.

Get measuring

Muffin top, beer belly there are many names for that bit of extra weight around your middle. But your waist measurement can act as a predictor for future health problems.  Those that store excess fat around our middles are more likely to develop heart disease, Type 3 diabetes and potentially cancer.

Weigh yourself

Knowing your weight and height means you can calculate your Body Mass Index or your BMI. This will show whether you’re a healthy weight for your height. 

These numbers are all important as they can act as a warning sign about your health in the future.  But how do you find these out, as they’re not something you can do at home.  As part of our suite of wellbeing services, we offer a health check service, run by health care professionals that allows you to offer these tests to your staff. 

How can my business mark Know Your Numbers Week?

If you’re looking for ways to help your business mark Know Your Numbers Week so your team can find out what health issues they may need to get addressed then get in touch with our consultants who will be happy to help you arrange some employee health checks and corporate health workshops. Or if your team already know their numbers we can help you arrange corporate nutrition workshops to help them improve their numbers for the next time you arrange an employee health check.