What is Health & Wellness? Meaning, Benefits & Steps to a Healthier Life

What is Health?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health is a state of absolute physical, mental and social well-being and is not just limited to the absence of diseases or infirmity (physical/mental weakness).

What is Wellness?

As per WHO, wellness is the optimal state of health of individuals and groups of people. It is a positive approach to living and is defined as an active process of growing, becoming aware of and making choices and lifestyle changes towards healthy living.

7 Dimensions of Wellness

Wellness is a multidimensional concept. Take a look at various dimensions of wellness below:

Physical Wellness - Physical wellness helps enhance physical fitness, which can lead to an increased ability to prevent diseases and illness. For instance, exercise can prevent a sedentary lifestyle and stimulate a healthy mind, thereby preventing mental and lifestyle diseases.
Emotional Wellness - Emotional wellness helps to deal with stressful situations. If you have achieved emotional wellness, you will have good self-esteem, as you are aware of your own feelings and can also empathize with other people’s feelings.
Social Wellness - Social wellness is essential to stay happy and healthy. You can achieve social wellness by interacting, relating and contributing to a community, maintaining long-term relationships with friends and family and maintaining good interpersonal relations within your social circles.
Intellectual Wellness - Intellectual wellness helps to avoid mental health problems. You can ensure mental wellness through mental exercises and engagement in learning, creative support, and problem-solving that challenge your mind.
Environmental Wellness - Environmental wellness can be achieved by living and maintaining a healthy physical environment that is free of any kind of hazards.
Spiritual Wellness - Spiritual wellness helps develop compassion, care & forgiveness and realise the true meaning and purpose of our lives. You can achieve spiritual wellness by meditating, spending time with nature and doing volunteer work.
Financial Wellness - Financial wellness helps to build a healthy relationship between your financial goals and obligations. You can achieve financial wellness by building a budget, planning your meals and living healthily on a budget.

Health vs Wellness

The biggest difference between health and wellness is that you cannot achieve good health without achieving wellness. Health is a state of holistic well-being which involves the diagnosis or predisposition of a disease/illness. On the other hand, wellness is preventive, proactive, and driven by self-responsibility towards living a happy, fulfilled and robust life. Thus, health and wellness are different but go hand-in-hand.

What is the Importance of Health and Wellness?

Focussing on health and wellness can help you develop a healthy lifestyle, supportive attitude and effective behaviour to achieve good health. Moreover, it prevents you from focusing only on symptoms, pain and disabilities as indicators of good health.

Tips to Maximize Health and Wellness

Here are some essential tips to maximize your health and wellness:

Eat a healthy and well-balanced diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables.
Exercise regularly, including strength training, to stay physically fit.
Maintain physical hygiene, such as washing hands before eating.
Practice yoga and meditation to reduce stress and manage anxiety.
Ensure annual health check-ups so that any disease or illness is detected on time.
Maintain a healthy body weight to avoid obesity.
Avoid smoking, chewing tobacco and using recreational drugs.
Buy health insurance to get timely treatment without worrying about the bills.

FAQs

Q1. What is health and wellness?

Ans: Health refers to the complete state of physical, social and mental well-being, which is not limited to diagnosis of diseases. Wellness is the optimal state of a person driven by self-responsibility towards healthy living. Thus, health is the ultimate goal, and wellness is the active process of achieving it.
Q2. What are the seven aspects of health and wellness?
Ans: Check out the seven aspects of health and wellness:
- Physical wellness
- Mental wellness
- Social wellness
- Intellectual wellness
- Environmental wellness
- Spiritual wellness
- Financial wellness
Q3. What is the importance of wellness?

Ans: Wellness is important to achieve good health that leads to a happy and robust life. It is an active process of making informed choices and lifestyle changes to achieve holistic well-being, i.e. mental, physical and social well-being.
Q4. Why is wellness good?

Ans: Wellness is good for you as it helps to keep you physically fit, reduce stress and improve your quality of life.

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Disclaimer: The list mentioned is according to the alphabetical order of the insurance companies. Policybazaar does not endorse, rate or recommend any particular insurer or insurance product offered by any insurer. For complete list of insurers in India refer to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India website www.irdai.gov.in