Introduction
Health and wellness are an essential aspect of life in our everyday life. This report will aim an investigating the various aspects of health and wellness and how best to maintain it. The report will also include the benefits or advantages of maintaining good health in our lives. Health has been a major topic of discussion in our daily news headlines and papers. Among the topics that will be covered in the report will include; an in-depth description of health and wellness, what self-management is, health benefits of physical activity, self-planning for healthy lifestyles, tobacco, and diabetes. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.4)
Health and wellness
Description of health and wellness; Health is the able being or the comfortable form of the body. When we are healthy, it means that all organs of our bodies are working properly and in harmony. Wellness refers to the optimal functioning of our bodies. Health means that our bodies can function well without medication or chemical support in them. (Corbin et al., 2009, p.5-6)
Dimensions of health and wellness; health does not only mean how good our bodies are but also the social and mental productivity in our lives. Mental growth that does not include stress or medical conditions is an aspect of good health. This includes our ability to think and interpret things properly. The social dimension of health and wellness is whereby we are able to interact with our peers well and have a common understanding. This goes hand in hand with behavioral wellness and information. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.9)
What are the factors influencing health and wellness? External factors are the main factors influencing our health and wellness. This means that the environment I live in will greatly determine how healthy or well I am. When we reside in places with environmental hazards, we are prone to becoming unhealthy. Foods high in certain minerals or components are bound to cause imbalances in our bodies. Behaviors or activities also influence our health. This calls for the best ways to adapt to our environments, prevention, and behavioral changes. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.10)
Self-management
Self-management is our personal activities or programs that aim at making us healthier and well. This means that we do not require help from other people when watching or adjusting our health. Self-management calls for our dedication to achieving or maintaining good health.
The five stages of lifestyle change. Lifestyle is every aspect of our daily lives. To change, it can be an upward task or rather difficult objective, especially when we are used to a specific way of living. When we are very unhealthy, we may require changing our entire lifestyle, but when we are better off, we only change a bit of it to achieve optimal health. There are five stages of lifestyle change. Maintenance is the first step of it. This means that the most important aspect of changing our lifestyle is maintaining what we have set or want to change. Keeping the new way of life at a constant is the main goal in this step. Taking action is the second stage. It means that we need to actively engage in exercises or changes to facilitate a positive change. Preparation of what we are about to undergo comes in third. We should be prepared to change our lifestyle both physically and psychologically. Contemplation is the second last step to achieving our lifestyle change. This calls for us to have a well and elaborate plan of how to change our lifestyles. After this, we then look at pre-contemplation. This is making any final adjustments to our program. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.96)
What are the factors that promote lifestyle change? Lifestyle is one of the hardest things we can change. To enable a smooth or fast change of lifestyle, self confidence has to be the major factor. This is the inner ability and willingness in us to change our lifestyle. Overcoming barriers and hindrances to lifestyle change is also a factor that promotes the positive change. We need to change old and baseless beliefs that may make changing of our lifestyles slow or futile. Lastly motivation is key factor in ensuring we are able to change. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.111)
Health benefits of physical activity
When we are engage in physical activities we are able to avoid many diseases that are tagged with poor lifestyles. Physical activity makes our bodies to be active and fight diseases by boosting immunity and rapid healing in case of injuries. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.12)
We are able to become more productive when we engage in physical activities. When our bodies are active, there is high metabolism and high blood flow rate. This makes the blood to flow to all organs in our bodies hence making us more active and vibrant to do all our chores or assignments. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.15)
Our mind relaxes and is able to develop properly when we engage in physical activity. Less stress levels in our bodies are associated with having enough physical activities. Stress in our bodies harbors our work, relationship and developments. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.19)
Physical activity leads to a long and healthy life. From exercises, we can avoid severe conditions such as stroke and diabetes. Physical activity ensures our whole body is in check and it does not develop complications. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.20)
Self-planning and healthy lifestyles
Self-planning involves clarifying the reason why we need to upgrade our lifestyle. This being the first step, it involves why we need to do so. Some of us may opt to do so because they want to be healthier or even want to avoid frequent visits to the doctor. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.22)
Identifying needs of changing lifestyle comes in second. Physical activity and proper diet aim at improving our health. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.24)
Setting personal goals is a major step in self planning. This involves change of behavior or attitude towards reaching a goal of good health in our life. Personal goals ought to be realistic as much as some of them might be hard especially on our first days of keeping fit. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.25)
We need to select a part of an activity or goal we want to attain. For example some of us want to reduce weight while others plan on physical activity to keep our blood vessels in check. For the male population of us, we mostly exercise to have a muscular physic. This is selecting the right component or part that fits us. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.29)
Setting and writing a plan is a major step in realizing wellness in us. This involves writing a promise or a pledge that we keep and strive to follow. A pledge is a symbol of honor once we attain or keep up to it. I some cases, we struggle because we are bound by the promise. It also acts as a motivating factor in our routine fitness program. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.45)
Evaluating our progress is the last step in self-planning for healthy lifestyles. This involves giving or writing a reply against our set goals. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.29)
Tobacco
The health effects of tobacco are many. To begin with, we will look at lung cancer which is the major risk that we are exposed to once we start smoking. The smoke in the tobacco has multiple components including tar that forms a layer or a thick surface lining on our lungs. Another complication that is caused by the smoking of tobacco is bronchitis. This is a severe condition of the air passage to the lungs. When we suffer from this disease, we can cough blood and have severe chest pains. Smoking also leads to gum and kidney diseases if it is prolonged. This calls for us to quit smoking and lead comfortable lives that do not depend on drugs or other substances that expose us to risks. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.32)
Strategies for breaking the nicotine addiction can be many. The first step towards breaking addiction is acceptance. It is important to note that far felt effects can be death and it might be too late to quit. After acceptance, we then need to seek professional help on how best to quit. This is because experts know what to do and what not to do. Drugs might be subscribed to us to make us not feel the urge to smoke. We may also be advised to cut down on the rate of smoking. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.37)
Diabetes
There are three types of diabetes. The first one is known as type 1. This is whereby our bodies produce low insulin levels. This type of diabetes calls for us to inject insulin in ourselves in case we are suffering from diabetes. The insulin will boost the low insulin present in our bodies. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.66)
Diabetes type two is when our body cells reject insulin. Blood cells and other cells in our bodies treat insulin produced at the pancreas as a foreign substance which is excreted as a normal by product. Therefore, sugar is not broken down from the food that we eat. Type 3 diabetes is gestational and affects pregnant women. They experience changes in blood sugar level. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.74)
There is health problems associated with diabetes. We might experience high blood pressure when we are suffering from diabetes. High blood pressure is known to lead to other complications such as cardiovascular ailments and heart attacks. When we are suffering from diabetes we are prone to the risk of developing kidney diseases. To help prevent diabetes, when we know we have the recessive gene, we should avoid over eating fast foods and high sugar level foods. We should exercise frequently and a lot. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.80)
Conclusion
Health and wellness are an essential aspect of life in our everyday life. As we have seen in the above report good health is living properly and being conscious of our body, mind and social wellness. We should avoid over indulgence in smoking, unhealthy eating such as fast foods and also in activity. We should have a fixe program that keeps us in check of our fitness and avoid stressful situations. As seen above smoking leads to cancer while inactivity leads to accumulated stress levels in our body. Too much fast food may cause diabetes. Having a program in self planning of keeping fit that we should strictly follow will help a great deal in changing our life style. Physical activity ultimately leads to a long and healthy life which is stress free. (Corbin et al, 2009, p.223)
References
Corbin, C. B., Welk, G. J. Welk, K. , (2010) Concepts of Fitness and Wellness: A Comprehensive Lifestyle Approach, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY