Wellness is all the rage now. There are wellness coaches, wellness experts, wellness practitioners and the list continues to grow. Optimal health allopathically speaking has always been viewed as freedom from disease, so basically if you weren't sick you were considered healthy. This perspective has slowly started to change. Most people would agree that absence of disease, sickness or symptoms is a component of wellness, but does not indicate whether you indeed actually "well" or healthy.
Wellness is a mindset and a perspective not only associated with health but also with a certain lifestyle. A lifestyle that may include certain nutritional parameters to minimise chemicals or processed and refined foods for example. Maybe it also address maintaining a certain body weight, includes strength training and aerobic or anaerobic exercise regimes. A wellness model may also address controlling other recreational substances like cigarettes, alcohol and illicit drug use. Meditation, breathing exercises and yoga are some others to also name just a few that could also be included. All of these are an example of variables that can be included when discussing wellness, and are controllable by the individual who is including them in their wellness model.
Some other commonly used wellness approaches include dental checkups, eye exams and chiropractic adjustments. These are just three examples of proactive wellness professions that focus on optimal function and not just waiting for a problem to arise before providing crisis care. Can you imagine if your dentist said "wait until you're in a lot of pain to come and see me?" I am sure you would have a nice cavity by the time you were in pain! Or how about your chiropractor saying the same thing, "Wait until your back blows out before you come and see me." Not a good approach to maintaining your wellbeing!
Statistics indicate that individuals, who exercise, avoid high fat processed foods and are proactive with regards to their health, have fewer absences from their jobs, and access medical services less frequently than others who don't. One article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicated that, in one study, the "wellness" approach resulted in a 17 percent decline in total medical visits and a 35 percent decline in medical visits for minor illness. The subjects involved participated in a year-long self-care education program.
Lifestyle factors are largely found to be the most important determinants in an individual's pattern of general health and wellbeing. Expanding our awareness and continue our education may help an individual to make better decisions with regard to their daily lives and health and lifestyle objectives. The choices we make will influence many aspects of our daily lives, from our energy levels, our moods, how we feel etc. Leaving those decisions up to someone else to give us a tablet or perform a procedure may be too late. The secret is in learning to develop habits and make decisions that provide consistent "self care." The traditional medical model focuses on treating symptoms and curing sickness. The wellness concept encourages us to take responsibility for our decisions and lifestyles for our optimal wellbeing.
Being proactive and focusing on prevention may help a person achieve optimal levels of physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. We could then say wellness is an active ongoing process, whereby we continue to learn, become more aware and improve our decision making toward a more optimal wellbeing experience. Adopting habits and behavioural routines that promote improved health and quality of life.
A person's quality of life may be individually defined, wellness is an approach to optimal wellbeing that focuses on the whole person.
A person's quality of life may be individually defined, wellness is an approach to optimal wellbeing that focuses on the whole person.
What is wellness? Keeping it simple we could define wellness as an integration of body, mind and spirit, and understanding that we each may have the ability to impact our individual state of health and wellbeing more than any other person, place or thing, and then act on that awareness to improve many aspects of our lives.
Yours in health,Dr. Stacey Burke and Dr. Eric Brukwinski Doctors of ChiropracticWest Coast Family Chiropractic,
22 Banks Ave, Hillarys, WA 6025, AUSTRALIA (08) 9402 8845
