Nowadays it is very common to hear about how you should be following a “healthy lifestyle”, “eating healthy” or some other of variation of these words. If you go ahead and do the research by yourself, you’ll realize that there are many steps involved in living a healthy life, which can often be difficult to follow by yourself.

Hiring the services of a personal health assistance can make it easier to keep up with a positive lifestyle through a series of medical evaluations and following up with good training and nutrition. See below a few tips about how you should find the best personal health assistant for your needs.

A personal health assistant is different from a healthcare assistant, as the former will be concerned about your overall health and create plans to improve it by changing your diet or implementing a training schedule, while the latter will be a professional that is usually employed to assist people who have just came back from the hospital, either from an accident or a long treatment, and will be needing help with going back to their normal lives, similarly to an occupational therapy assistant.

This first advice should apply whenever you are hiring the services of a professional, which is looking up their credentials and references. A personal health assistant should always be someone with a degree either in medicine, physical education, nutrition or related fields from an accredited university. You should be careful as it’s often common to see digital influencers and celebrities giving health advices without having enough knowledge of what they are talking about, which can negatively influence many people.

Whenever you can, ask for references and see how well they progressed with the help of the professional you are considering hiring and if there were any issues or peculiarities not mentioned by the personal health assistant.

You should keep in mind that some professionals can be more used to treating certain types of people, for example athletes or the elderly. Even though everyone has their own differences and characteristics, try to find an assistant who has previously worked with people with similar issues or backgrounds that you have, if possible.

Any personal health assistant should be aware of your pre-existing conditions and any genetic diseases you might develop. Therefore, it’s important to fill out a health history questionnaire that will include your family medical history, habits, allergies or any other issues you might have. This should guide your assistant towards certain paths that will focus on managing an illness while simultaneously having a health goal for you.

A reliable personal health assistant should feel more like a friend who you’ll have to listen and follow their recommendations. They should begin your program by setting your goals, developing strategies and plans to reach them, and following up with periodical medical examinations and assessments. If you feel like they are not too concerned about your progress or take too long to do your check-ups, then it might be the time to find someone else.