Your Comprehensive Guide to Health and Wellness
Are you now at a point in your life where you’re wanting to improve your health and wellness but feeling overwhelmed with the information you’re seeing online?
If so, let’s explore how to have a positive and long lasting impact on your overall health, wellness, and mindset by learning first the basics.
Table of Contents:
Before anything else, let’s get to know each other better. I’ll share my story and I'm looking forward to hearing yours too!
I have come to many conclusions about traditional health systems after (as of now) a two-year journey into my own healthcare and survival from a near death experience in 2020.
I have the utmost respect for medical professionals. I certainly have been a huge benefactor of their help and expertise. However, at times when presented with undeniable facts including blood work where one doctor says, “...is the bloodwork of a 25-year-old” and I’m currently 69, questions arise in my mind.
I also had a doctor who prescribed medication for me because I had a heart attack 22 years ago and then had to have another stent in January of 2020 due to a blocked artery. I had been taking medications for high cholesterol and high blood pressure for years but when this physician recommended this additional medication, I asked him why? His response was so robotic and so benign I actually cringed. He said it's highly recommended for cardiac patients like me and that I should take it.
Upon researching this medication, the first side effect I learned about was nightmares, along with fatigue and a plethora of other non-desirable side effects. No thanks with all due respect.
While we all must have trust and faith in our healthcare providers, it should go without saying that an education in what we are putting into our bodies is necessary. Prescription medications are used as a last resort because they may not be completely effective or have serious side effects as was mentioned earlier.
This blog was realized because of my passion to help guide people like you who are also seeking for better health and wellness without having to take multiple medications.
My goal in this specific article is to give you clarity on the path you want to take moving forward while understanding this amazing but almost ignored industry.
The Difference Between Health and Wellness
The World Health Organization (WHO) states that the primary determinants of health include the social, economic, and physical environments, and the person’s individual characteristics and behaviors.
On the other hand, the National Wellness Institute defines wellness as “an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful existence”.
In short, Health is a state of being and Wellness is the state of living a healthy lifestyle.
Now, as I continuously speak to and research about functional and integrative medicine professionals, I am optimistic that these folks truly care about the overall health and wellness of an individual.
They provide a more natural and less invasive treatment protocol to help their patients. They combine any treatment plan you currently have with alternative therapies to help improve your overall health and wellness.
Why Health and Wellness is Important
Being healthy and living a lifestyle free of illnesses while having access to unlimited peace, comfort, growth, and change can be everyone’s goal.
But what are more specific reasons why people want it? Here are the benefits of optimal health and wellness:
Less Stress
More Energy
Better Relationship
More Money
Longevity
Imagine a life with all of these, is it possible? Or is it too ideal for one person?
Every living individual has challenges in terms of overall health and wellbeing given the history of humankind alone. But the bigger problem actually comes in the way we manage these issues. One of the main reasons why I vouch for integrative and functional medicine practitioners is how they treat not just the symptom or disease but also looking at the factors contributing to the problem.
What are these factors or pillars of health and wellness?
8 Dimensions of Health and Wellness
The holistic approach to health and wellness involves not only the physical and mental state of a person. There are other dimensions that are mutually interdependent to each other. This means that ignoring one of these might affect the other, then another, and so on. Understand more about these wellness pillars below.
Physical
Emotional
Financial
Social
Environmental
Vocational
Intellectual
Physical
Physical health is living with good habits to make you fit, feel better, and thrive. It’s more than just doing physical activities or exercises. It also includes monitoring your medical records, taking safety precautions, observing a balanced diet, and others.
Emotional
This is the ability to acknowledge and manage your feelings. It includes self-care, building and nurturing relationships, and being vulnerable to ask for help.
Financial
Financial wellbeing is your relationship with money, how you earn, spend, and invest it, and how you decide your goals considering your unique state, needs, and wants.
Social
This includes your awareness around your culture and community. It’s how you connect and build relationships, contribute to the overall safety of the place, and help people in your network.
Environmental
One thing that’s important in this pillar is the awareness that we are the biggest controller of how good or bad the air, water, and food we take are. Environmental wellness is how we feel and treat the natural environment as well as our fellow human and living creatures.
Spiritual
Spiritual wellness is known as being grateful and having faith at the higher source or being. Apart from that, it’s also practicing a meaningful life and doing things that are aligned with your beliefs and values. If you are spiritually healthy, you’re genuinely connected with your mind, body, and soul. You’re also an instrument of goodwill.
Vocational
This is the dimension of health and wellness focusing on work, profession, business, or career. Your wellness is measured depending on your set goals but overall wellness in this space is the feeling of satisfaction.
Intellectual
This is mostly related to your brain and mental health. It includes your learning, reasoning, and decision making activities as well as how you handle uncomfortable actions, curiosity, and new ideas.
8 Simple and Tested Ways to Improve Health and Wellness
In this blog post, I’d love to share about the things we’d rather do than tell you the things you should NOT be doing (well, maybe, I’ll share about that too in another post, let me know). With this list, you’ll get the best value from the hours I’ve spent to dig in the most valuable information and research from reliable sources.
Drink Enough (not too much) Water
Oh, this one is easy, right? There’s a whole bunch of articles about the eight or 10, or even 20+ benefits of drinking water so you might as well just do it. Wait until you read the next line.
According to holistic doctors, particularly Dr. Eric Berg, you got to drink enough and not too much water or you’ll dilute the amount of sodium that your blood actually needs.
How much is enough? It really depends on your activity, the temperature in your environment, the medications you’re currently taking, your health issues and concerns, and others. Actually, according to Dr. Berg, you should be more focusing on how to maximize the absorption of water into your system. He recommends adding high-quality electrolytes or sea salt to your water.
Break your Sugar Cravings with this Simple Step
Another root cause of why many people get sick nowadays is sugar.
Want to know the best yet simplest way to start breaking your sugar addiction? Dr. Mark Hyman says, “If you see refined flour, soybean oil, or high fructose corn syrup in the label, just don’t eat it.”
So yes, your first best step is to read the label and start avoiding food with those ingredients. See, you don’t need to be an expert to do that.
Avoid Harmful Irritants and Eat Real Foods
This is related to the point above except that we only mentioned sources of refined sugar – which is definitely NOT a real food. Real foods are those that didn’t go through machines. So if you can, why not do away with anything processed, right? I understand, it’s not going to be easy (well, every change is hard) but think about the impact it gives to your whole body.
You may or may not know already that inflammation is how our body’s immune system reacts to a harmful irritant such as germs or foreign objects. According to Dr. Andrew Weil, once inflammation escapes its boundaries of time and space, it can be really damaging and produce disease.
Now processed foods are just one of the quickest ways for foreign objects to get inside your body. You might not notice but you’re already feeling symptoms of ulcer, gastritis, autoimmune diseases, allergies, and others.
Eat the Right Fat for Best Brain and Body Responses
“Oh, is there a right and wrong fat?”, you might ask. Well, you might be surprised but yes, there is. And they are the culprit of our current mood, energy levels, alertness, overall mental health, and how our brain and body responds.
Here are main food sources of the right fats:
avocados,
raw butter (not margarine) from grass-fed sources,
coconut oil,
extra-virgin olive oil,
salmon and sardines or fish oil supplements,
Nuts (walnuts and almonds are the best),
eggs,
organic beef,
yogurt,
dark chocolate, and others.
Add Nutrients to your Diets with Supplements
While there are a lot of dietary supplements in the market, you might be aware that some of these are giving more harm than good. However, I added it to this list because I am confident that there are several health supplements that can actually help you take in the right amount of nutrients for optimal health.
Should you take supplements? Do your own research about any supplement you plan to take. Also, it’s always best to consult your physician (I recommend speaking with a functional medicine doctor too) especially if you are taking medications. Finally, be wise, discover the science behind the supplement and ask all necessary questions you have.
Exercise and Observe Natural Body Movement
I know you’ve read or heard about exercises and its benefits a lot of time already. The problem is that when you do your research for what’s the best exercise to do for your specific need, there will be a whole bunch of information to show up.
My best tip is to be clear with your goal so you’ll be led to a more specific physical exercise or natural body movement recommendation. Actually, it might be more helpful if you reach out to Personal Trainers, Nutrition Experts, or Holistic Doctors for guidance. For a start, learn more about the four types of exercise because research has shown that it’s importance to get all of it.
Appreciate Time and Sleep
Not enough sleep may increase your risk of chronic health problems.
If you’re busy juggling work, parenting, and a new business, there are chances when you will be obliged to work late nights and weekends. Well, for me, doing such once in a while might be alright but when you make it a habit, these are some of the consequences:
Less focus
Higher chance to get colds and cough
Increased food cravings
Higher risk to heart diseases, obesity, and stroke
Sometimes, just taking a pause or rest from the busy lifestyle we’re used to is more advantageous if we want to achieve more.
Nurture your Environment
As mentioned in the 8 Dimensions of Health and Wellness above, we are the biggest controller of how good or bad the air, water, and food we take are. Apart from these, nurturing your environment might also include your current and new relationships.
How do you nurture your environment? Well, it could be as simple as being grateful for what you have every single day. When you do that, you’re helping increase your dopamine levels which is necessary in several activities of our body. This includes:
Learning
Heart function
Blood vessel function
Kidney function
Lactation
Sleep
Pain processing
Conclusion: How Health and Wellness Impacts Your Life
With all the information shared above, it just pays to pay attention to our overall health and wellness. Getting to our desired destination could be a long journey but starting somewhere would mean a lot. Where do you plan to start in your health and wellness journey? Or Have you already started taking steps towards your goal?
If you’re somewhat feeling stuck with the question “How do I exactly start?”, how about going through your 8 Dimensions of Health and Wellness and carefully assessing where you’re at and where you want to be next?
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Optimize Your Overall Health and Wellness TODAY!
No need for NEW fitness gears. No worries about setting aside additional TIME or ENERGY. Just incorporate these with your EXISTING routines or swap them with your OLD HABITS.
