The world health organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This is a very short and succinct description of health, itself. There are dozens upon dozens of papers trying to define the concept of health across many healthcare realms —nursing, medicine, pharmacology, physical therapy to name a few.
If you ask a handful of people to define “health,” you will get a different answer each time. Health to me is spiritual, mental, physical… It is social, it is economics, it is resiliency and reflexivity when being confronted with suboptimal experiences.
You can have a strict anti-inflammatory diet, drink a proper amount of water, sleep 8 solid hours each night, have impeccable dental hygiene, be free of viruses and bacterial infections, but still not be healthy. In this hypothetical lifestyle, your physical health is maintained to the best of one’s ability, but it is so easy to forget about mental, spiritual, and socioeconomic health… What about culture and your ability to participate in it? How about spending time with loved ones? Are you able to get outside and walk in nature? How do you cope with stress?
One of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast was to share others’ experiences with their own health and healing journeys. Health is not a one-size fits all sort of thing. Just like lifestyle isn’t, nor are certain medications for specific ailments, nor is there a one-size fits all diet that we can live by.
Back to defining health; in a nutshell, health is a combination of internal and external factors that represent your overall well-being. It can be contributed to by things such as age, genetics, sex, gender, coping mechanisms, unresolved trauma, viruses or other pathogens, your economic status or location (as it pertains to food availability, access to health care, access to education and other opportunities)… Health can be affected by social factors, such as any family you might have, friends, your workplace. The list can go on indefinitely.
Maybe you have a unique way of coping with daily stressors or an unusual habit that helps you maintain your own health. If you do, I’d love for you to share it! Did you ever think of health being so multifaceted? When I first started learning about health as a nursing concept, I had only thought health to be a physical state of well-being…
This concept of health will be built upon throughout this podcast, so I hope this segment has laid down a good foundation for us to build upon.
Quote from: https://www.who.int/about/who-we-are/frequently-asked-questions
