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Aspects of Health

What is Health?

Health literacy (knowledge and understanding) is the ability to understand accurate health information and apply it for your benefit. What you know and what you believe affect decisions you make for your health. Having accurate health information equips you to make good decisions for promoting your health.

Healthy People 2020 (health goals for all Americans) published by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) defines health literacy as the ability to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.

Your health is not just one thing. It has many different aspects (parts or features).

What Are the Aspects of Health?

  • Physical health - refers to the body
  • Mental health - refers to the mind
  • Emotional health - is about our feelings
  • Social health - is how we interact with others
  • Spiritual health - is our beliefs for a meaningful life
  • Environmental health - refers to our surroundings

Let’s take a closer look at each aspect of health.

Physical Health

The physical aspect of health refers to the condition and care of your physical body. This includes injury, illness or anything that affects the body. Having physical health gives you endurance to meet your daily energy needs and helps prevent injury and illness. You gain and maintain physical health basically through physical activity, healthy nutrition and adequate rest. There are other important needs to keep the body working properly as well:

  • staying hydrated
  • avoiding substance abuse
  • dental health and hygiene (cleanliness)
  • access to proper medical care
  • being vaccinated to prevent illness

Physical Health Assessment

Although much of physical health is visible, it is necessary to assess your personal health status (overall level of wellness). Having knowledge of your health status enables you to set goals and make good choices for your health. Measuring height and weight, checking blood pressure, and calculating BMI (body mass index) are all means to assessing your personal health status.

Measurements

There are simple measurements that give valuable information on the condition of your health. For one example, use this CDC BMI calculator to calculate your Body Mass Index. You can use the BMI Calculator for Children and Teens link for your age category.

Your physical health affects all other areas of health. When your body is not working at its best, it is difficult to focus mentally or to interact as well with others, because all aspects of health are connected.

Mental Health

Mental health deals with the mind and how we think and act. Mental health is feeling good about yourself (self-esteem) and being able to meet your daily demands of life. A person with good mental health can make decisions and handle normal problems and stresses of life. Going to school regularly and taking care of responsibilities are signs of mental health. However, just as a physically healthy person can catch a cold or sprain an ankle, a mentally healthy person can struggle with mental health issues at times.

Maintaining Mental Health

Look at the list of early warning signs of mental illness in the article MentalHealth.gov: What is Mental Health. The article also offers tips for maintaining positive mental health. Make a note of two or three of the suggestions you can use to promote your mental health.

Poor mental health also causes physical changes to the body. It becomes more difficult to socialize or handle emotions properly. You can take steps each day to promote happiness and a positive outlook. We are responsible for developing our mental health just as we are our physical health.

Social Health

Social health is to how we interact and get along with others. This is an extremely important aspect of health during the adolescent(teenage) years. It includes building and maintaining healthy relationships. Social health gives us the feeling of being connected. Obeying rules and having respect for others is an example of good social health skills. The ability to communicate effectively has a big impact on our level of social health. You will learn more about communication skills in future lessons.

Improving Social Health

Our level of social health affects all other aspects of health. Therefore, it is important to continue to improve our social skills. National Institutes of Health has a “Social Wellness Toolkit” with 6 strategies for improving your social health. Read the flashcards then flip the cards over for tips particular to your needs. Spending time with friends and family, even when we are not feeling our best, is important for promoting social health.

Emotional Health

Emotional health is about your feelings and how you express them. We experience feelings all the time. It is how we act them out that shows our level of emotional health. For example, anger is not all bad. It doesn’t feel so good when we are experiencing it. However, we can use our strong feelings toward something positive like exercise or working hard at practice to reach a goal. Expressing emotions in positive ways shows signs of stable emotional health.

Expressions Examples

Let’s look at examples of expressing love to compare the difference in the level of emotional health. We generally associate love with nice emotions that make us happy. Sometimes people think it is loving to control or isolate another person. Love does not need to control others or isolate others. Love encourages people to become all they can be and protects the well-being of others.

Emotional and Mental Health

Emotional health is closely related to mental health. Your thoughts and feelings are affected when there are major changes in life, loss of a loved one, and even great accomplishments. Learning to express our emotions in healthful ways is necessary for promoting emotional and mental health.

Environmental Health

Environmental health involves our surroundings. This can be everything from the area where we live to the people around us. Certainly, you have learned the quality of the environment(air, water, soil, food) around you affects your health.

According to Healthypeople.gov, maintaining a healthy environment is very important to increasing the quality of life and adding years to your life.

Environmental Factors

Some of the primary concerns that affect environmental health are:

  • air quality
  • clean water
  • hazardous waste
  • homes and communities
  • occupational hazards

Promoting environmental health is important for preventing diseases, disabilities and injuries related to people and their environment. Healthy environment adds to the quality of life. All aspects of health are affected by the environment.

Spiritual Health

Spiritual health is believing in something greater than yourself. It gives meaning and purpose to life. Spiritual health serves as a guide for your morals and values and gives peace of mind. It is closely associated with mental and emotional health. Take a look at how the Mayo Clinic defines spiritual health in the article Spirituality and Stress Relief: Make the Connection. Pay particular attention to how spiritual health relieves physical symptoms of stress and improves mental health.

Overall Wellness

All aspects of health work together for a balance of overall wellness. Each aspect affects other areas of your health. Think about how much lower your stress level is when you have plenty of sleep. This impacts mental and emotional health and enables you to socially interact more positively with others. A physical injury or illness brings on some mental, emotional and social challenges. Having a broken bone would cause some added stress to daily activities and responsibilities.

Examples

Stress, which originates as mental thoughts or how we perceive events, causes heart rate and blood pressure to rise. These mental thoughts cause many physical changes within the body without even moving. Spiritual health behaviors, which may include meditating or praying, have been shown to lower heart rate and blood pressure.

Environmental issues such as weather conditions, noise, pollution, and numerous others have an effect on the other aspects of our health as well. Road rage (aggressive behavior from drivers) is an example of how an environmental problem becomes a serious social problem.

The interrelationship of all aspects of health will be covered throughout this health course.

Barriers

When we know and believe an action or behavior is good for our health why do we not automatically do it? What barriers (blocks or obstacles) prevent us from practicing healthful behaviors? Some typical barriers that keep us from making better health choices are:

  • do not see immediate consequences
  • not motivated
  • time
  • not enough support
  • money
  • habits

We must strive to overcome barriers in order to enjoy the benefits of the healthier choices. A barrier to getting physical activity could be the habit of spending too much time on the computer. Small steps can change habits. Take short breaks. Ten minutes of walking is a start. Get support by asking a friend or family member to walk with you. Or, talk on the phone to pass time as you walk. Listening to music makes walking enjoyable.

The benefits of even small changes add up. Whatever goals you have, more energy -better sleep, making the team -can be accomplished by starting with small steps.

Health Promotion

Throughout this course you will learn more about behaviors and lifestyle habits to promote your health. Practicing healthful behaviors daily is the best way to lifelong health. This is a list of the most beneficial physical health tips for teenagers.

  • Exercise regularly.
  • Eat and drink a healthy diet.
  • Maintain a healthy weight.
  • Get enough sleep.
  • Keep up with vaccinations.
  • Brush and floss your teeth.
  • Wear sunscreen.
  • Turn loud music down.

Look at Teenagers: How to Stay Healthy for tips in the other areas of health. Pay particular attention to the first one in each list. Which list is most helpful for you?

Making good choices each day in all aspects of our health leads to a lifestyle of wellness. Take good care of yourself. There are no duplicates!