You hear all of these people talk about wellness, including me, but what is it? Why not talk about health if that is what they mean? I think the best way to approach the question of “what is wellness?” is to compare it to “what is health?”. In my mind they are very different. So…
What is Health?
The way I define it is by what your doctor would probably tell you. You don’t have any life threatening diseases, your heart is pumping blood through your body, and you can generally get around ok. Your doctor tells you that you are “healthy” which means that you aren’t “sick”.
But is that good enough? A lot of people go to their doctor with aches and pains or various other complaints only to have their doctor tell them that there is nothing wrong with them. They are healthy. Whatever their complaint is, it’s just in their head or it’s a natural result of getting older.
That isn’t good enough. If we are healthy then we should feel great. Since that isn’t the case with modern medicine someone coined the term “wellness”. So…
What is Wellness?
Wellness is about feeling great and functioning at your body’s peak efficiency and effectiveness. If you hurt, then there is a reason. If you feel a little under the weather, then there is a reason. Even though the cause cannot be discovered by medical examinations and tests, there is still a cause.
Wellness practitioners look at lifestyle to affect how you feel. What you eat and drink, how you sleep, and the environment around you can affect your wellness and all of these factors will be taken into account.
What I find exciting about wellness is that it isn’t at all confined. There are dietitians and nutritionists who look at how food affects the body. Massage therapists and chiropractors assess the body itself and how your posture habits affect you. Energy therapists and others might tell you about how your habitual thoughts and other energies are affecting you.
It is all changing daily as we learn more and more about how our bodies work and respond to the things around us. I’m sure you’ve noticed how one expert can tell you one thing and another will tell you the exact opposite. This is especially true in nutrition right now. I think the reason is that this is all relatively new and because there are so many variables and they aren’t all known yet.
What do you think? Tell me your thoughts in a comment below and share this out with your followers on the social sites.
Wayne Woodworth
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Good job in defining wellness. Wellness has become such a large industry and can be very vague that people often do not really understand what wellness is really all about. What really gets me is that people believe they are very healthy because they have not been diagnosed with a disease. However, there is more to health and wellness than being free from disease. Great post!
Amber Keinath recently posted..Get Healthy Recipe- Roasted Vegetables with-without Fish or Meat
Thanks for commenting Amber. My opinion is that disease is the alarm that your body raises after you have ignored all of the other alarms, alarms like headaches, pain, rashes, upset stomachs, etc. that most people think are just a part of life.
Wellness is by some defined as all fields of life in balance. Others see it from the macro-cosmos and micro-cosmos combined into balance. There is not much difference. For the Ancient Greek wellness was about: body, mind, spirit, family, society, finance. These are like pillars to build upon a great wellness. So, feeling good is not the whole deal. Feeling good should come forth from all these aspects put into balance.
Aschwin Wesselius recently posted..awesselius- If the human species is on top of the food chain- why does it mess with the lower species health food superfood
I agree with you. Feeling good is the end result. If something is out of balance then we don’t really feel as good as we could. That’s what I like about wellness, it extensive and inclusive. Thanks for the comment.