If someone goes off-grid, they could potentially take with them a whole host of health concerns that hinder their everyday living. Naturally, once they get out into nature, they will have limited access to medicine, doctors, and specialized medical treatment.
The mistake is neglecting your major mental and physical health needs before making the plunge into a self-sufficient lifestyle. If you cover your bases first, you’ll likely have a much less difficult entry into off-grid living.
Going off-grid doesn’t immediately disqualify you from accessing modern medicine and receiving medical attention when you need it. However, it partly defeats the purpose of handling challenges on your own, and disconnecting from the system.
If you’re ready to go off the grid, I’m going to caution you with some tips and considerations. The last thing I want for you is to shift to independent living when you’re not yet ready to be independent health-wise.
Minding Your Mental Health
Living off-grid will present just as many mental challenges as physical challenges. That’s why it’s important to address and maintain mental health before disconnecting from modern infrastructures.
Part of what fuels modern living is the increasing density of type A personalities driven to produce and consume more. It’s not that type A personalities are a problem, but this doesn’t always create an equal playing field for everyone.
Often, type B personalities, who find more satisfaction in living life simply and more methodically, are attracted to self-sufficient living. But they may not realize it at first.
Leaping into the off-grid lifestyle can produce new stressors you might not have anticipated. Obviously, the security of having all utilities provided for is no longer there, but one of the hardest mental hurdles when switching from an urbanized lifestyle to an off-grid one is the fight against cognitive slowdown.
By removing the stimuli of modern living and achieving simplicity in mental freedom, you’ll want to be cautious that you don’t let your mind go. Mental health decline is one of the primary challenges that older survivalists face. For the same reasons mentioned above, more seasoned off-gridders will want to be proactive with their mental health by staying organized and learning coping mechanisms before heading off-grid.
Stock up on Brain Food
Plenty of resources on the internet will give you high-level, basic knowledge on how to eat health. What I care about is highlighting food options to preserve higher brain function and physical well-being while living off-grid.
Specifically, you need to consume nutrient-dense, vitamin-rich foods if you want to prevent cognitive decay. Green leafy vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, eggs, coffee, and tea are wonderful sources of these nutrients that will support your brain health.
Obviously, it can be tough to keep stores of such wholesome foods at all times, especially during winter months. As such, consider setting up a seed bank to anticipate spoilage of foods that you’ll want to keep in your meal rotation.
[Editor’s note: I wrote a book about the best foods to stockpile if interested.]
Keeping up With Physical Health
While mental health shouldn’t be ignored, you have to be physically capable of meeting the demands of self-sufficient living, too. It’ll be your responsibility to provide the fundamentals like heat, shelter, and food, which can be very physically demanding.
Admittedly, if you’re not fit now, living off-grid will eventually make you fit. You’ll have to build your own shelter in some fashion, plant or hunt food, collect water, administer your own medical help, and deal with whatever else befalls you that was never a concern in suburbia.
If you choose to live in a community of other like-minded folk, you’ll have the benefit of their help at times. But you want to make sure you’re in peak physical condition so that you can contribute as much as they do, even if you’re not as active as you once were.
Prepping Medicine and Healthcare
One of the first and best steps you can take from the start is to visit your doctor, dentist, optometrist, and any other specialists that make sense to you. If you have an underlying health problem or something that you believe may progress into one, you’ll want to get that addressed before you start a new lifestyle.
Living self-sufficiently takes a lot out of you, and you don’t want to agitate current problems with the newly added stress on your body.
Like I said before, just because you’re going off-grid doesn’t mean you’re exempt from medical treatment when you need it. You should have a crash plan in place for when medical emergencies arise as well as a means of accessing medical professionals when you need them. A wonderful resource on the topic is The Survival Medicine Handbook by Dr. Alton; I would absolutely grab a copy if you don’t own it yet.
Being able to problem-solve for your health while living off-grid is important to establish early. You need to have a value system in place that will dictate what action is necessary if something major happens to you. You need to have a system in place to help you make decisions on how you’ll resort to modern medicine, if at all. For instance, are you going to attempt to maintain dental health on your own? What will you do if you crack a tooth?
Take a topic as seemingly ignored as eye health. Even a simple eye wash, for flushing your eyes if you get something in them, can be a crucial item, yet easily overlooked. What if you wear eyeglasses or contact lenses and they break? Perhaps preventative eye care is one path you’ll take to anticipate future problems.
If you’re someone who struggles with chronic pain, you’ll want to look into methods to hold it at bay, but as I said, off-gridding is toilsome work, and it will require a lot of you. If you can help it, enter the off-grid game firing on all cylinders by dealing with chronic issues now.
A lot of this comes down to compromises at the end of the day. If you have an apparent health condition and you want to live free of it, you may have to reinsert yourself to “the grid” from time to time to keep your health needs under control. It’s highly likely that you will eventually become ill in some way. Somehow, you will get injured or suffer from some health issues at some point. Fortunately, you can do a few things to anticipate future challenges.
For instance, you can start by asking your doctor to fill additional prescriptions if you have any. It might seem ethically gray to grant that request, but if you explain your reasoning to your doctor, they might be willing to cooperate with you. Coupled with that, you can seek supplements to pair with your prescription doses to help spread out how often you need your prescription medication and make it go further, though I would absolutely talk to your doctor about it.
[Editor’s note: Absolutely discuss any changes in diet, supplements, and medications with a qualified healthcare provider!]
Assembling Your Medical Preparedness Kit
It makes sense to keep a first aid kit handy, but you’ll want to load this thing with a diverse selection of tools that can combat nearly every scenario. Here are some non-standard items you’ll want to incorporate into your emergency kit in addition to the basics, like bandages, gauze, and antiseptics:
- Lidocaine
- Codeine
- Epipen
- Dental kit
- Eye wash kit
- Ear cleaning kit
- Hemorrhoid cream
- Calamine lotion
- Cortizone cream
- Needles
- Surgical blades
- Splints
- Additional prescription doses (if necessary)
- Medical manuals detailing common procedures
There are numerous sources out there that will show you the basics to include in your kit, but you really want to include a wide array of options to face anything that comes your way, and Dr. Alton’s Survival Medicine Handbook is a wonderful resource, too.
Problem-solving Healthcare Emergencies Off-grid
I would encourage you to look into as methods to treat ailments on your own at home. You can start doing this right now by picking an area of your body and asking yourself the following four questions:
- How much do I know about this area of my body?
- How many things am I aware of that can go wrong with that part of my body?
- How can I prevent those things from happening or treat them once they happen?
- At what point do I call a real doctor and seek professional help?
Assemble a list of medical concerns you know you have a grasp on, concerns you’re iffy on, and concerns you have no earthly clue about. It’s obviously difficult to list health concerns you don’t already know, but the object of this exercise is to recognize potential problems that you may already be aware of but don’t necessarily have any knowledge or ability to heal.
For example, let’s say one of your family accidentally injures a major artery in their forearm. If you already know how to administer a tourniquet and apply techniques to tend the wound, then you may be in control of the situation. Of course, if you don’t have that knowledge yet, your default solution will be to panic! In either case, you should seek medical attention immediately because a arterial bleed is deadly.
At the very least, keeping a list of scenarios like this will help you decide how to react in an emergency. The goal of this lifestyle is independence and freedom, but it doesn’t have to mean denying the medical privileges of the age we’re fortunate enough to live in.
Considering Health Insurance
The idea of having health insurance while being self-sufficient might cause you to scratch your head, but depending on your income, you might qualify for Medicaid which will help to offset any medical bills you might generate. For those with a chronic condition, it’s probably worth looking into a principal care management (PCM) plan, which can be more affordable than traditional insurance. There are also non-profit, faith-based healthcare solutions that focus on contributions by members to pay for the needs of other members when times to crisis occur. Whatever you choose, your healthcare is one of the most difficult topics to deal with off-grid, and it shouldn’t be ignored.
Remove Fear
I really want to drive home the point that you shouldn’t be afraid of what’s out there. Human beings have been living off-grid in some fashion for thousands of years. Illness and injury have always been around, and we’ll keep coming up with ways to fight them. The important thing to realize is that, with proper planning and knowledge, we can manage our healthcare, even in an off-grid situation.
[Note: This was a guest post.]
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