What is Health?

Keywords

Health, physical, mental, social, spiritual, performance, exercise, mental ability, sedentary, obesity, osteoporosis, diabetes.

Introduction

According to most sources, health is the ability to function well physcially, mentally socially and spiritually. This means you should be completely happy, and able to perform at an acceptable level when working. It is often referred to as something we need to look after.

But what actually is health?

Definition of Health

The WHO (World Health Organisation) define health as:

"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

This was said in 1948, and is still used today to describe it, however, the WHO have seconded it and made further clarifications:

"A resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capabilities."

Nowadays, we think of health as something we need to enable us to lead of full and worthwhile life experience. This experience is down to how much we eat, what we eat, how often we exercise, what exercise that is, but also how we are feeling at the time. This leads me on to the different types of health.

Physical Health

Our physical health is that of how we move. It can be attributed to when we move, exercise, and our ability to carry out everyday tasks. This is a simple attribute we can continue to manage on a daily basis. It is strongly linked to the things we eat, as well as how often we exercise.

Interesting fact: due to increased use of sedentary methods of play (video games), and higher obesity rates, children in today's age are more likely to live less years that their parents.

When we reach a certain age, our body parts stop working as well as they should. This can happen to anybody at any age, and is the result of how we are made. Our bodies become incapable to maintaining the optimum levels it is used to having, and therefore we may end up needing help from time to time to help us with some activities.

For example, a person that lives a mainly sedentary lifestyle - that being one where they are sat for long periods of time and hardly moving - will suffer later in life with things like muscle deficiency, osteoperosis (brittle bone), diabetes, and other ailments that are attributed to less exercise. So, we need to maintain these movement ideas (go for a walk or run each day) to enable our body to be as supple as possible.

Mental Health

Our mental health attributes to how we are coping with everyday life. If we struggle, it can be deemed that we are not coping, and therefore this affects the way we feel, and how we combat that is how we make ourselves happy.

Mental health also works in sync with our physical health. If our physical health is suffering, so too, generally, will our mental health. This is also linked with becoming older, and also to conditions like depression. When we maintain our mental health (being happy, having that positive attitude, and general upkeep of our day-to-day lives), we will maintain a healthy mental state.