Our country keeps statistics on many things. However, I don’t believe we have definitive statistics on health and wellness. Are you an ‘average Joe’ with regards to health and wellness compared to your peers?
What is average health and wellness? Wellness is a broad topic. It can include the categories of social (sense of belonging), physical (vitality), environmental (resilience and self-esteem), intellectual (creativity and learning), career (skills, talents and creativity), spiritual (sense of purpose and values) and financial (cash flow, savings and investments).
Today’s blog is not about wellness, although I will delve into those topics in the future. Let’s talk strictly health. Health is basically being free of injury and/or illness. If we don’t currently have an injury or illness, then we are definitively healthy, right? I don’t think so.
How many prescription medicines are you taking? It most likely depends on your age. Older people tend to be taking many more prescription medicines than younger ones. Many of their drugs are countering the side effects of other drugs they are taking. However, should you even be on prescription medicines?
If you are truly healthy, then you should not be taking a single medicine to correct some disorder. I will grant that sometimes you will need something from the doctor to take for a week or ten days to correct a temporary perturbation in your health. But, that is strictly a temporary band-aid, so to speak.
Are you able to do just about anything? I’m not talking about competing as an athlete. I’m talking about the functional things required of living – movement, lifting, reaching, etc. My wife and I just finished walking the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain (500 mile pilgrimage).
We interacted with people from all over the globe. Some were exceptionally fit, others were not. But, they were there doing something they wanted to do. If you can’t do what you want to do, are you healthy?
Health starts with awareness and then leads to action. Have you ever asked your doctor what you could do in lieu or a prescription medicine? Or, how you can eventually get off that medicine? If you are on one (or more), that might be a good place to begin an awareness program for 2017.
