Jesse Webb Reaction: Health and Wellness

Reflection/Reaction Piece

The topic that I thought was interesting was the basic concepts of health and wellness that we discussed at the beginning of the year. It was interesting to me because it encompasses such a wide range of areas, and I had no idea that health was such a wide field. Health encompasses not only your physical well being, but also mental, spiritual, and social well being as well. As with wellness, it covers intellectual, environmental, and occupational areas. Putting them all together is what makes a person healthy. This topic has impacted my life by showing me that I need to balance every area of my life to be truly healthy. It’s easy just to focus on one area, but being healthy takes much more than that. I’ve really tried to make an effort this semester to be healthy and have wellness in every area, including physical, spiritual, mental, social, intellectual, and environmental aspects. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s paid off and made me a truly happy and healthy person. Life is way too short to get by and not live it in the best way possible. Health and wellness is important to public health because it can be affected so easily in our everyday lives. Depending on what culture you live in, health isn’t always the focus. In America, being successful is more important than being healthy. People often give up their health in order to be successful. In jobs, they stay up late, work long hours and skip out on friendships and family time, eat unhealthy food, lack exercise, and do so many unhealthy things. So health and wellness in the public health sphere is key to include in culture and everyday aspects of our lives so that we can have happy, healthy, and productive lives to have a healthy population. Other questions I have about health and wellness are how I can continue to make healthy choices as my lifestyle changes and I change from being a college student to an adult in the real world.