Health and Wellness

Health is a word often associated with good fitness; it refers to "the state of optimal physical, mental, and social well being". Early definitions of health focussed on illness. The first medical doctors concentrated on helping sick people get well; they treated illnesses. Health was nothing more than an absence of disease. But as medical and public health experts received better training, they began to focus on the prevention of illness or disease as well as on the treatment. This new focus led world health leaders to define health as more than absence from disease.

In recent years the definition of health has been expanded to include wellness, a state of being that enables you to reach your fullest potential. It includes your intellectual, social, emotipnal, physical, and spiritual health. Wellness has to do with feeling good about yourself and with having goals and purposes in life.Wellness is more likely to be present in individuals who assume more responsibility for their own health. So illness is the "negative" component of health that we want to treat or prevent, and wellness is the "positive" component of health that we want to promote.