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.