Action Plan for Optimal Health
There are so many aspects to health and wellness that one may not know where to start to begin to understand. Some think being healthy is never being sick a day in their lives, while others understand a deeper definition that is health and wellness. There is the light side of health, understanding the concepts of what makes a person physically and mentally sound. Then there is the dark side of health, the things that most do not like to think about in terms of unhealthy. We start by explaining the basics of what it is to be healthy.
The six elements of health and wellness – physical, emotional, intellectual, social, environmental, and spiritual – are all important in maintaining near perfect health (Donatelle, 2011, p. 5). The three most important elements that need more public awareness are environmental, emotional, and intellectual. Without our environment we would not be able to feed our bodies the right nutrition, hydrate with clean water, or breathe fresh air. Without these factors in a healthy lifestyle, it would lead to poor physical health, and in turn poor emotional health as it would take a toll on our hormones causing a drop in dopamine and serotonin. Becoming depressed because of being ill would lead us to become isolated from our friends and family. Over the years our mind may develop a memory problem and also reduce our cognitive process. Finally, our spirits would be crushed under all of the distress, leaving us without hope and finally perishing lonely and sick. Emotional health is the second most important because our feelings and emotions are what determine what we do with our bodies, how social we are with others, if we choose to learn new things, and whether or not we share compassion for our environment and all its living creatures. A healthy emotional self would be able to focus more on being healthy than self-hating tendencies and an obsession with suicide. The third most important element is our...