Complete Wellness
What is complete wellness? Is there such a concept? How do we define wellness and how do we achieve wellness?
According to the website Wellness Proposal, wellness is defined as being free of disease; thus, if you were not sick, you were considered healthy. This perspective of being well is changing. While everyone agrees that the absence of illness is one part of being healthy, it doesn’t indicate whether you are in a state of well-being. The Wellness Proposal, website states that:
- Wellness, as a state of health, is closely associated with your lifestyle.
- Essentials as good nutrition, proper weight control, exercise, and controlling of risk factors such as smoking, alcohol and drug abuse
- It is a proactive, preventive approach designed to achieve optimum levels of health, social and emotional functioning
- Wellness-oriented lifestyle encourages you to adopt habits and behaviours that promote better health and an improved quality of life.
- It also involves the recognition that you have physical, physiological, social/emotional needs, with each dimension being necessary for optimal levels of functioning.
My strong belief on the concept of being well is in congruence with what Wellness Proposal defines! As a practitioner, to achieve optimum wellness for my patients, I seek three aspects of well being: Physical, Physiological and Emotional!
So when we are sick how do we not have the same approach towards wellness? We tend to run towards the fastest cure instead of recognizing the physical, psychological and social/emotional needs. Forget being sick for a minute, and let’s focus on your life would you consider yourself being well? If the answer is no where do you think you can improve? Physically , physiological, or emotionally? If you are asking what does it mean to be physically well, psychologically well or emotionally well, we clarify these terminologies to get you on the path of wellness.
Physical wellness: Do you exercise daily? Why is this concept so important? As a Chiropractor I see individuals on a daily basis who are worried about arthritis. How can I prevent arthritis? Arthritis is simply a decrease of space in a joint and when there is too much friction then it results in an inflamed joint. Let give another example, let’s take a look at two separate door hinges. We pour water on them for a week, and one door we keep closed for years. The other door we keep opening hundred times a day. Both have rust (arthritis) that has developed on them one with rust in the hinge joints and the other just on the metal portion of the hinge, now 5 years later we go to open both these doors. Which door do you think will open easily? Of course it’s the one that has been opened 100 times a day, rust developed on the face of the metal but it did not affect the function of the joint. Where there is motion there is life, so keep moving go out and even though we all will encounter some sort of arthritis in our live we will not be debilitated by this condition. As a Chiropractor it is my duty to ensure that the joints in your body are able to get its optimal motion. So visit your Chiropractor once in a while to ensure there is no restriction in your body.
Wellness is a positive approach to living – an approach that emphasizes the whole person physically, physiologically and emotionally. Today we briefly discussed the physical approach. Next time (next week) lets go in-depth with the physical approach of treatment. The following week we will discuss the physiological and emotional approach.
- by Lotus Wellness Center