Wellbeing guide from Police Mutual Know your numbers week
Know Your Numbers Week (2nd – 8th September 2024) encourages people to get their blood pressure tested. Many people have high blood pressure without knowing it which can cause other health problems. As well as understanding your blood pressure, it’s also important to understand your cholesterol, blood sugar and body mass index.
The more you know about these key health numbers the more you can do to take steps to look after yourself and lead a long and healthy life. This guide will provide you with some self‑tests that you can do yourself at home and also information on how to improve your overall wellbeing.
Your weight
The vast majority of people will know if they are carrying too much weight or not. If you don’t own a set of scales, then you can use the waist to hip ratio. All you need to do is measure your hip at the widest point and your waist at just above the belly button. Then what you do is divide your waist size by your hip size.
• A ratio of 0.95 or below for men is good and 0.80 and below for women.
• 1.0 or higher for men and 0.85 or higher for women is greater risk of poor health.
Alternatively you can just measure your waist:
• The ideal waist size is 35 inches for men and 32.5 inches for women.
• A waist size for men of 40 inches (102cm) and 35 inches (88cm) for women increases the risk of diabetes and heart disease significantly.
Waist size is important because its all about where you store your fat. If you store your fat around the waist then its sitting around your vital organs such as the liver and kidneys, which will increase the chance of
diabetes and cholesterol.
Read more from this wellbeing guide here