The Quiet Health Habit: Knowing When to Ask for Help

There is a side of wellbeing we don’t talk about quite as much as stretching, walking, eating well or getting a decent night’s sleep.

It is knowing when something needs professional attention.

Today, 17 September, is World Patient Safety Day, and this year the focus is on safer care for people living with long-term health conditions. The World Health Organization points out that conditions such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease often involve ongoing contact with health services, sometimes over many years.

World Patient Safety Day 2026⁠

That got me thinking about something much more ordinary: the tendency many of us have to put things off.

“I’ll see how it is next week.”

“It’s probably nothing.”

“I don’t want to bother anybody.”

I suspect plenty of men around my age will recognise that last one.

Whole-person wellbeing, though, isn’t about trying to manage everything ourselves. The Wellness Wheel works because its different parts support each other, and looking after our physical health sometimes means recognising the limits of self-care.

Meditation can be useful for relaxation. Yoga can help flexibility and strength. A sauna can be wonderfully enjoyable. Walking, friendship, decent food, sleep and time in nature all have worthwhile places in a healthy life.

But none of them replaces appropriate medical care.

That distinction matters particularly in holistic wellbeing, because it is very easy for sensible lifestyle practices to become mixed up with claims that they can diagnose, cure or treat illnesses. I’m interested in traditional and complementary practices, but I think we should be able to enjoy them without pretending they can do jobs they cannot.

Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is make the appointment.

There’s another part to this that I think fits naturism particularly well: becoming comfortable with our own bodies can encourage us to pay attention to them without becoming obsessed with them.

Naturism is how we live throughout the year, whether we’re outside in summer sunshine or comfortably at home while September weather does its thing. And today Wales is getting a very September mixture: early rain clearing into sunny spells, with some showers possible in the north and west and breezy conditions more generally.

Our bodies change with the seasons too. Energy fluctuates. Sleep can change. Old aches occasionally introduce themselves again when it gets colder.

Most of that is ordinary life.

The useful habit is simply noticing what is normal for you.

If something new persists, worsens, worries you or simply feels wrong, don’t feel you have somehow failed at wellbeing because you need advice. Speak to an appropriate healthcare professional. And if something feels urgent or severe, seek urgent medical help rather than waiting for a wellness practice to sort it out.

There is strength in knowing what we can do for ourselves.

There is equal strength in knowing when we shouldn’t.

So today’s wellbeing practice requires no yoga mat, walking boots, incense or meditation timer.

Take two quiet minutes and check in with yourself. Is there an appointment you have been meaning to make, a prescription question you need to raise, a screening invitation sitting unanswered, or something about your health that you have been quietly postponing?

If there is, perhaps today is the day to deal with it.

What is one small piece of looking after yourself that you’ve been meaning to stop putting off?