What Is Meant by Good Health?

what is meant

We all want to be healthy, and there is no difference of opinion on this. To take good care of our health, we have to find out what exactly is meant by health.

Well, most of us are quite familiar with this common term, but, as far as I think, we have to get more familiar with it because there is more to it. So I have put together this article, after a good deal of research for fact collection, intending to spell out what common people and experts have to say about it.

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Dictionary Definitions Of Health:

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the term health refers to “The state of being free from illness or injury.”

Longman dictionary defines “health” as “The general condition of your body and how healthy you are.” Another definition of health, in the same dictionary, is “when you have no disease or illness.”

Physical And Mental Health: The Two Main Aspects Of Health

According to most people, Who can break down health into two major aspects: physical health and mental health?

Different people have different perceptions of health based on the situation. Let us shed some light on this with a few simple examples.

Let’s say a wife is concerned about her husband, who will take part in a car race. Now, from the example, she is most likely worried about the physical health of her husband. In car race competitions, the participants are more prone to accidents. As a result, they may get severely injured. Here we are referring to physical injuries, such as an injured or broken leg.

In another situation, a mother is worried about her son’s health that burns the midnight oil to get through exams with flying colors. Here, there is a good chance that the moth is concerned about her son’s mental health. (Both physical and mental health are related, though)

We also have a broader definition of health where the term doesn’t involve any medical contexts. Let us take another example: Good GDP growth is crucial for a healthy economy. In this example, the term health points to the prosperity of an economy, which counts on the growth of GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

Now, let us go into details of both physical and mental health.

Physical Health:

As far as humans are concerned, a human being is seen as healthy if his body is in good shape because of good nutrition, regular exercise like cycling, running, swimming or physical activities, and adequate rest.

The fact is that whenever people are asked about what they mean by health, they start talking about physical health.

Your level of physical health is based on the condition of your body. For good physical health, all of your body parts (both internal and external) should be hale and hearty and should function as they were designed to function.

Physical wellbeing is another term that is often used to refer to physical health. Physical wellbeing involves your ability to understand and take steps to make your body work as efficiently as possible, considering all the limitations you have.

For physical wellbeing, you need to develop optimal nutrition, endurance, flexibility, and strength. At the same time, you have to follow safety precautions, such as taking medicines to fight diseases and illnesses and to recover from injuries.

Fitness refers to your cardiorespiratory endurance (your ability to work for hours, such as walking, running, swimming, climbing uphill, and so on), body composition (when it comes to physical fitness, this term refers to the percentage of water, muscle, bone, and fat in your body), flexibility (if you can bend your joints without feeling any pain, you have a good level of flexibility), and muscle strength. Other factors that tend to make you fit include:

  • Hygiene.
  • Keeping away from alcohol and drugs.
  • Managing weight.
  • Eating foods for proper nutrition.
  • Physical health can also be divided into two sections for easy understanding: Structural health and chemical health. Let’s throw some light on them.
  • Structural health: For good structural health, you need to maintain the health of your organs, muscles, and bones. Each bone, muscle, and organ has its functions to perform, and if they do it well, that means you have good structural health. Measures to identify a person’s structural health include BMI (body mass index), height/weight ratio, heart rate, and time it takes them to recover after exercise.
  • Chemical health: Every day, we all tend to inhale or swallow certain synthetic or natural chemicals, such as over-the-counter drugs, certain foods, clothing dye, and pesticides, to name a few. The right amount of chemicals and nutrients in your body means you have sound chemical health. That means your body should not be containing toxic chemicals.

Toxic chemicals tend to make their way into your body through the skin. Tissues and cells can get destroyed by certain chemicals, while others can hurt genetic material (the substance in the cell). The human body fights these chemicals naturally to prevent toxins from inflicting any harm.

Mental Health:

Mental health is linked with your cognitive (your ability to know, understand, learn something) and emotional fitness (your ability to control your emotions). If you have no mental disorder, you are mentally healthy. According to World Health Organization (WHO), the mental health of a person refers to “a state of wellbeing in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stress of life, can work effectively and productively, and is able to make a donation to his or her community.”

It is probably easier to define mental illness than mental health. But as far as most people’s opinions are concerned, one thing is obvious: mental health is the absence of mental illness. But this definition or point of view is quite controversial as some people believe that some people enjoy much better mental health than others even though they all have no mental illness, based on medical checkups. These people enjoy their lives to the fullest, are better able to get through adverse situations, are flexible and adaptive, and feel safe and secure.

So, this was a brief explanation of what health means. Staying healthy is important as they say, “Health is wealth.” Health matters a lot! Do you have something to add to this article? Please include it in the comment below, and we will make it part of the article.