Numeracy is a term used to describe the ability to comprehend and use numbers in everyday life. This ability is part of literacy, which was frequently underestimated in the past. Luckily, things are slowly changing these days and more and more people are interested in improving these skills. Of course, judging by the results of numeracy tests, there is still plenty of work to be done. Numeracy can affect many aspects of our lives. What is known for sure is that better skills like this can improve our life greatly. One of the things that is affected by the numeracy skills we possess is our own health and well-being. As we are all aware, the modern lifestyle has drastically influenced our health and many people are suffering from illnesses and diseases that were not very common in the past. This is something that we can change with good numeracy skills and many experts have confirmed that these skills lead to better health and well-being. But, how exactly can they do that?
First and foremost, many patients, especially those who are a little bit older, have problems with the medical directions because they can’t read them in a proper way. This is especially true with the numerical information found in them. The same goes for the directions found on appointment slips and medication bottles. These people can’t follow a proper treatment and don’t know when their next appointment will be. Even people who had excellent literacy skills can’t follow directions which include complex numerical tasks.
Furthermore, people who got information about the risk of certain disease were not able to understand the actual risk because they don’t take the numbers seriously or they don’t understand them. That’s why they rarely visit the doctor and don’t take tests that can prevent certain diseases.There are many people who receive medical findings about their current state. This is a regular activity for diabetes patients, for example. However, many of them, because of the lack of numeracy skills, cannot determine whether their glucose value or any other value related to their health is within the normal parameters or not. This means that they don’t know what type of therapy they need and how much medications they should take. This is something that can have serious long-term consequences to their health.
Another scientific study has confirmed that people with good numeracy skills have lower risk of developing diseases that affect the brain like Alzheimer’s disease, for example. Their skills keep their brain vital for a longer period of time compared to those with underdeveloped numeracy skills.
What we can conclude is that numeracy skills should be developed in parallel with literacy skills because they are very important for our health and well-being.
There is more than one way to work on these skills and one of the simplest and most convenient ones is through Maths games. These games are specially designed for people of all ages who want to improve this specific set of skills.
