Mrs Nirmal Anand used to work as a nurse across West London but has now retired and is in her seventies. She has lived in Hounslow for many years and met One You Hounslow health advisor Alpana Rathor at the Multicultural Centre in Hounslow during a Know Your Numbers Week promotion in September of 2018 where she received a free blood pressure check.
Whilst at the Multicultural Centre Alpana informed Mrs Anand of the free four-week Cook and Eat courses that One You Hounslow provides. Mrs Anand was interested in the course and so she was registered with the service and attended the Cook and Eat course which started at the beginning of May 2019 at Hounslow Multicultural Centre. The course was delivered in a mix of Punjabi and English. Mrs Anand said: “I very much enjoyed the course and even though I am a trained nurse it was a very useful refresher course for me and encouraged me to increase my daily intake of fruit and vegetables.”
Next Mrs Anand had a health check carried out by One You Hounslow in July 2019 and she self-referred herself to the One You Hounslow health advisors to help her set some goals to be more active. Mrs Anand was encouraged to walk as much as possible and requested to be registered for seated yoga sessions at Frogley House in Hounslow.
Mrs Anand was very pleased at the result of the seated yoga that she attended. She said: “Yoga was very helpful. It’s improved my mobility as my mobility was going down and I was worried about it because I’ve got osteoporosis and I’ve had so many falls in the past so just getting my balance, improving my balance helped me a lot. I can walk better, I can do the housework better. It has improved the quality of my life”.
Mrs Anand was also encouraged to monitor her blood pressure regularly with the machine she has at home and she was referred to an NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme which she feels was very useful and has made her more careful about what she eats.
We asked Mrs Anand her opinion of the service she’s received from One You Hounslow. She said “It is an excellent service for the elderly you’re providing, giving them incentive to go out, learn something for themselves to improve their own life and encourage other people to do the same”
When the weather improves Mrs Anand plans to attend the Hounslow Heath health walk to help her to keep active.
What would be Mrs Anand’s message to other elderly people in Hounslow who may be feeling down as she used to feel?
“I would say to get out of the house, look after yourself and learn something. It’s never too late to learn. There’s always a place to learn, learn something, do something rather than sitting home in front of the telly and getting worse, getting depressed. Especially people of my age, retired people, elderly people, whatever their capacity, do something about it. Look after yourself”.
One You Hounslow health advisor Alpana Rathor has been in contact with Mrs Anand over the last year and is really pleased to see her progress.
She said: “The feedback Mrs Anand has given is that we’re doing a very good job in the community helping people like her who aren’t aware of all the services there are to help people, she also gave the feedback that she would recommend our service to her friends and family.”
Alpana continued: “When you hear feedback like that you get a lot of job satisfaction and it motivates you when you hear from people first hand and you see how your help has changed someone’s life.”
If you would like to speak to a One You Hounslow health advisor about setting some goals to live a healthier lifestyle please call 020 8973 3530.
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