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HEALTH AND WELLNESS

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Health and Wellness

It is important to realize that although many use health and wellness interchangeably, they are two different concepts with different meanings, and one cannot have one and lack the other. According to World Health Organization, health refers to a state of complete, mental, social and physical well-being and not necessarily lack illness. On the other hand, WHO defines wellness as an adequate state of health of a person or group of people and is expressed as a positive approach to living(Radhakrishnan, 2021). The major difference between wellness and health is that health is the goal, while wellness is an active procedure or process of achieving the goal. Therefore, no concept can stand on its own since there must be regular wellness in order to have good health.

Wellness is essential since it influences a robust, fulfilling and happy life. Although one cannot select the state of health, it is possible to choose wellness by living a responsible life and being active in promoting wellness. Wellness involves various steps towards growth and change in order to attain the fullest well-being and health. It entails making effective and sustainable choices and lifestyle changes oriented in diet, nutrition and spiritual practices (Stoewen, 2015). There is a need to focus on lifestyle choices to control risk factors that may harm an individual. Risk factors ate conditions that maximize an individual’s risk of an injury or a disease. Such factors include smoking, drinking alcohol and extreme physical activities. Smoking can lead to lung cancer, while consuming excess drinking can lead to cancer, heart disease, and intense activities, leading to bone breakage and other kinds of injury. It is therefore important to choose a lifestyle that reduces such factors.

As many may not be aware, wellness is not only associated with physical health but also have other dimensions. It includes intellectual, environmental, social, environmental, spiritual and emotional wellness. Physical wellness is about physical fitness whereby a person enhances their ability to prevent diseases such as diabetes. Physical activities promote a healthy body and mind. Exercises such as cycling, walking and hicking help to avoid sedentary life. In addition, taking a sufficient amount of water, eating a balanced diet, and sufficient sleep also contribute to physical wellness.

Intellectual wellness revolves around mental exercises through creativity, learning and problem-solving. Learning new skills and challenging one’s mind plays a key role in preventing mental health problems (Globalwellnessinstitute.org, 2019). Emotional wellness, on the other hand, helps to deal with hectic and stressful situations. A clean and healthy environment free from hazards plays a key role in promoting our wellness. Social wellness involves interacting well with the community in order to develop favourable interpersonal relations and healthy relationships. Finally is spiritual wellness, which comes from forgiving, compassionate character and caring. It is also achieved through volunteer work and meditation.

Therefore, it is important to focus on a healthy lifestyle that prevents diseases and promotes a sense of well-being. Considering that optimal health emanates from wellness, it is essential to make decisions and develop behaviours based on healthy attitudes. Although we cannot completely avoid stresses of practice, we can make efforts to prevent stress occurrence and to wear us down. Every day is a new chance to make life better in terms of all the components oriented towards wellness. Lifestyle diseases have increasingly received a lot of attention in the current world. However, to deal with such an issue, it is important to understand the importance of health and wellness to make informed decisions to curb such diseases. 2021 WHO report revealed 71% of each year's deaths are due to lifestyle diseases(WHO, 2021).

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