Health and Wellness

Health and Wellness
Health is a word often associated with good fitness. Early definitions of health focused on illness.

The first medical doctors concentrated on helping sick people get well; they treated illnesses. Health was considered as nothing more than absence from disease.

But as medical and public health experts received better training, they began to focus on prevention of illness and disease as well as in the treatment of people who were already sick.

This new focus led world health experts to define health as more than absence from disease.

In recent years the definition of health has been expanded to include wellness, as state of being that enables you to reach your fullest potential.

Wellness includes intellectual, social, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects. It has to do with feeling good about yourself and with having goals and purposes in life.

Wellness is more likely to be present in individuals who assume responsibility for their own health.

So illness is the negative component of health that we want to treat or prevent, while wellness is the positive component of health that we want to promote.
Health and Wellness

Health Reflects Life

Health Reflects Life
Annoying fact: The better our lives, the better our health is likely to be. Studies show that life is unfair in this way.

Among these findings: low job satisfaction is the number one predictor for future heart attack.

Socio-economic standing – income, educational level and power predicts general health better than any other single factor except age.

It gets worse. College students who remembered loving relationships with their parents have been found thirty years later to have far less illness than those whose parental relationships were more strained.

People who believe their spouses love them live longer. People with more friends are healthier. Laugher and happiness make the immune system work better.

Sex is good for your; fun is good for you. People who report lower stress levels have lower blood pressure and stronger hearts.

It is almost as of our bodies know how we feel about our lives as of our immune systems and all our other miraculous self healing mechanisms get discouraged when we get discourages as if they feel hopelessness, grief, and stress when we feel these ways.

It’s not just that happy people exercise more or eat better – though they tend to. “Mind/body” research demonstrates that our bodies, especially our unconscious self care systems (such as the immune system), react to our life situations as strongly as do our conscious selves.
Health Reflects Life