Wellness: Concepts and Applications
Are You Well?
Wellness refers to the condition of good physical
and mental health, especially when maintained by proper diet, exercise, and
habits. Nutrition refers to the
nurturing of our body, in our ability to keep it healthy and functioning as it
is supposed to do. Our ability to
provide the body with all the necessary food, vitamins, and minerals so that we
continue to thrive in our daily life processes.
But do we know if we are really well?
How do we tell?
The first place to start would be with the
examination of your eating habits. Since
we are a product of what we eat, if our eating habits are unhealthy, or do not
provide for the nutrition we need, we’re not going to be healthy individuals at
the end of the process.
Do you take in more calories than your body
needs? Are you supplementing your
vitamins and minerals to make sure you are getting your recommended daily
allowances? If you’re not making the
most basic of efforts to take care of your nutritional needs, you aren’t a well
individual. You may not look sick, you
may not have any noticeable symptoms of ill-health, but you’re not the well
individual you could be.
Next, you might want to look at your exercise
habits, if there are any. If there
aren’t any exercise routines to examine, no wellness. Everyone, no matter what their age, benefits
from exercise. It keeps our bodies
conditioned, our mental sharpness working at top speed, and thanks to the
physical aspect, we get a boost to our cardio health, extra calorie burn, and
more oxygen to those cells!
What about the stress levels in your life? Do work in an environment with high levels of
stress? Is your personal life a source
of comfort or does it add to your stress levels? Do you engage in some form of
stress-relieving activity? Stress is the
number on contributor to heart attacks and strokes, since they manage to speed
up the affect of the real culprits.
Stress is basically an out of control situation for most adults today. We manage to schedule every moment of our
free time, and leave ourselves with no time for quiet reflection, or time to
deal with life’s unexpected emergencies.
Stress brings us to the next two topics of health
abuse. Smoking and drinking are often
used to offset the effect that stress has on our nervous system. These solutions however do not provide any
real help. If you smoke, drink, or lose
sleep to excess, you’re not the well individual you could be. Smoking, drinking, and loss of sleep work to
our detriment, and it takes extreme discipline to stop. Smoking fills our body with carcinogens, and
works to keep us tired and lethargic.
There are so many occasions to stop and question
our efforts at maintaining optimal health, that we usually don’t even take the
time to begin the examination. But it is beneficial to our overall health, the
quality and quantity of our life, to make every effort to be well, healthy,
individuals.