The term ” wellness ” has ancient roots but is now modern. Ancient cultures in the East (India, China) and the West (Greece, Rome) have long upheld the fundamental principles of wellness as preventive and comprehensive. Alongside traditional medicine, several intellectual, religious, and medical movements emerged in 19th-century Europe and the US. These movements, with their emphasis on natural and holistic methods, self-healing, and preventive treatment, have given wellness a solid basis in the modern era. Under the writings and intellectual leadership of an unofficial network of US doctors and philosophers (including Halbert Dunn, Jack Travis, Don Ardell, Bill Hettler, and others), wellness-focused and holistic methods have been more well-known since the 1960s and 1970s.
This definition is significant in two ways. First of all, wellness is an “active pursuit” that involves goals, decisions, and deeds as we strive for the best possible state of health and wellbeing rather than a passive or static one. Second, wellbeing is associated with holistic health, which encompasses a wide range of aspects that ought to function in concert and go beyond physical health.
Although we all have personal responsibility for our own decisions, actions, and lifestyles, our physical, social, and cultural surroundings have a significant impact on our overall wellbeing.
Terms like health, happiness, and wellbeing are frequently confused with wellness. Even if they have specific characteristics, wellness differs from them in that it does not relate to a fixed state of being, such as happiness, good health, or a state of wellbeing. Instead, wellness is linked to an active process of awareness and decision-making that results in the best possible overall health and wellbeing.
The Continuum of Wellness
Thinking of health as a continuum that stretches from disease to a state of optimal wellbeing is one way to conceptualize wellness. On the one hand, sick patients use the medical paradigm to treat their ailments; they engage with healthcare providers in reactive and episodic ways. On the other end of the spectrum, people actively prioritize preventing problems and optimizing their health. They embrace mindsets and ways of living that enhance their quality of life and feeling of wellbeing, prevent illness, and promote health. Stated differently, wellness is self-responsible, proactive, and preventive. The rise of wellness is extending this consumer value and worldview.
Healthcare is not the same as wellness. With an emphasis on the causes, effects, diagnosis, and treatment of illnesses and injuries, our healthcare systems employ a pathogenic and reactive approach. Wellness, on the other hand, is a proactive and salutogenic strategy that emphasizes healthy lifestyles, prevention, and the goal of optimal wellbeing. In the end, a strong foundation for wellness aids in the prevention and treatment of disease, both now and in the future.
The goal of wellness is to improve your physical and mental health by adopting good practices daily. This will help you thrive rather than survive.
Understanding the connection between wellbeing and health is crucial to appreciating its importance. “A state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing and not only the absence of disease or infirmity” is how the World Health Organization (WHO) defines health.
A number of essential aspects of your lifestyle are regarded as aspects of your general wellness. These consist of social interaction, physical activity, diet, rest, and awareness. Every one of them affects your emotional and physical wellbeing. You will be well on your way to lowering stress if you consistently make easy and healthful decisions.
The goal of wellness is to maximize wellbeing rather than just being free from disease.
The term’s ideas are similar to those of the alternative medicine movement, which has its roots in 19th-century American and European movements like Leben reform, Christian Science, and New Thought that aimed to maximize health and take the whole person into account. In addition to mentioning the idea, Ayurveda is a complete field devoted to the concept of wellbeing and health maintenance.
Additionally, the term “wellness” has been abused to refer to pseudoscientific medical procedures.
The 1948 World Health Organization constitution’s preamble, which stated that “health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing and not only the absence of disease or infirmity,” served as some inspiration for the phrase. The term “high-level wellness” was first used in the United States in the 1950s by Halbert L. Dunn, M.D., who was the head of the National Office of Vital Statistics. Dunn described it as “an integrated method of functioning, which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable. John Travis then coined the term “wellness” and, in the middle of the 1970s, established a “Wellness Resource Center” in Mill Valley, California.
In contrast to what he claimed was the disease-oriented approach to medicine, Travis promoted the institute as an alternative medicine. Robert Rodale popularized the idea through Prevention magazine, Tom Dickey founded the Berkeley Wellness Letter in the 1980s, and Bill Hetler, a physician at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, organized an annual academic conference on wellness. In the 1990s, the word had established itself in mainstream usage.
It was observed that mainstream news outlets have started to dedicate more page space to “health and wellness themes” in the last [when?] decades.
The six-factor model of wellness, now referred to as the dimensions of wellness, was created in the 1970s by University of Wisconsin physician Bill Hettler. Intellectual, emotional, physical, social, occupational, and spiritual wellbeing were among the initial dimensions. The US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, for example, has added two additional dimensions of wellness—financial and environmental—to the original six. Since then, numerous organizations and researchers have modified the dimensions of wellness to fit into their health programs. The aspects of wellbeing have also been integrated into student care initiatives at numerous universities.
The idea had gained popularity in workplace employee support programs by the late 2000s, and the Affordable Care Act provided funds for small businesses’ creation of such programs. Corporate wellness initiatives have come under fire for discriminating against individuals with impairments. Furthermore, although there is some evidence that wellness initiatives might save companies money, this information is typically derived from observational studies that are subject to selection bias. Randomized studies frequently have methodological problems and have less favorable outcomes.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was created for a variety of reasons, one of which was the discrimination against disabled individuals in corporate wellness programs. A health promotion or disease prevention program that incorporates disability-related questions or medical examinations is considered an employee wellness program under the recently proposed Americans with Disabilities Act rule. The Americans with Disabilities Act covers two kinds of wellness programs: health-contingent and participatory. The requirement that such programs be reasonably designed to enhance health or prevent disease has been removed from this current proposed rule.
Although the term ” wellness ” is quite broad, it is frequently used by proponents of untested medical treatments like Goop or the Food Babe. Jennifer Gunter has blasted the wellness movement for what she sees as its encouragement of overdiagnosis. Goop’s position is that it “offers[s] open-minded options” and is “skeptical of the status quo.”According to Michael D. Gordin, pseudoscience is a poor category for analysis since it only exists as a derogatory term that both scientists and non-scientists use to disparage others without ever using it themselves. Generally speaking, pseudoscience refers to something that appears to be science but is, in fact, unreliable, deceptive, or unverified. Astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics are among the practices that are included in the category of pseudoscience.
Wellness has also come under fire for emphasizing lifestyle modifications rather than a broader emphasis on harm reduction, which would include more institutionalized methods of en
hancing health, such as preventing accidents. The wellness movement has also come under fire from Petr Skrabanek for fostering a culture of peer pressure to adopt its lifestyle modifications in the absence of supporting data. The idea that “outward appearance” is “an indication of physical, spiritual, and emotional health” is another ideological fallout from the wellness movement, according to some opponents, who also compare it to Leben reform.
It has been said that wellness serves as a springboard for radical conspiracy theories and behaviors. According to research by the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Parasciences, conspiracy theories, and alternative medicine groups are similar in that they both have “a strongly dualistic worldview of “good” versus “evil”; a desire for a straightforward response to complex issues; and an anti-scientific tendency.” Far-right wellness influencers have been more likely to associate themselves with Qanoon conspiracies during the COVID shutdown, spreading false information and growing the group’s membership. Both groups share similar views, such as opposition to vaccinations, false information about COVID-19, and the notion that a covert gang of public servants is operating a child trafficking sex ring. Wellness is a widely accepted idea that is frequently brought up about health. Health in and of itself is a state of well-being that encompasses physical, mental, and social components, even though well-being is a complex, active process that leads to a more successful and meaningful life. The relationship between wellness and health is covered in this topic.
