Have you ever wondered what the difference between Health and Wellness is? Different people have different views and thoughts on this. The scientific definition of being healthy is quite simply the absence of disease. Now what exactly does that mean? On the one hand it means a patient has no chronic illness, no apparent symptoms or injuries and on the other hand it also means there is no underlying medical condition that is undiagnosed because it is asymptomatic.

So, it is safe to say that a healthy person is healthy inside out, has a robust immune system, a good stamina and appetite and can do his or her work and play tasks easily with no pain, tiredness or strain. A person in good health is not likely to get sick in the near future during the normal course of events.

However, if a person is symptom and pain free, he or she may still have an underlying condition such as hypertension (high blood pressure) or Hypercholesterolemia (high blood cholesterol) or high BMI (high Body Mass Index as in the case of overweight people)  that puts him/her in the unhealthy category but the person does not know about it because they haven’t visited a doctor due to lack of any medical complaint and because they did not go in for a preventive health check which would have sniffed out the “latent” or hidden anomaly and the person could have taken preventive action.

 Very few people are proactive and get their preventive health checks done to know if all their body parameters such as fasting blood sugar, heart heath (ECG readings) and TSH (Thyroid Stimulating hormone) are in the normal range. These people actually score high on their health scale.

Consider Wellness on the top end of such a scale that is an ideal state of wellbeing of the mind and body. I would like to define wellness as the perfect quality of life that you envisage and that you can achieve by making informed choices in various spheres of life to better your quality of life.

In other words, wellness is how you live, how you aim to attain holistic growth or change that leads to an overall sense of wellbeing. Wellness has several dimensions such as physical wellness, emotional wellness, environmental wellness, spiritual wellness, intellectual wellness, social wellness, occupational wellness and any other dimension of wellness that may impact your life directly. All of these traverse our body and mind and we need an equilibrium in each dimension to live well and achieve a healthy body physically and a peaceful mind mentally.

Mental health, our emotions, and even our external environment all influence the release of hormones in our body that in turn evoke reactions in our body that influence our health. Therefore, living well and being proactive to be in an optimum state of wellness will lead to good health.

Our wellbeing and our emotions & actions are directly connected and influence one other forming a continuous cycle. What matters most right now is to manage, reduce or subdue your stress, ensure positive reactions and reduce the risk of illness.

Find out what your stressors are so you can manage them, list activities that make you happy and do these regularly and ask yourself if you suspect any health issue however small and address it with a consultation or preventive health check that determines if your body parameters are normal , low or high and follow your physicians advise.

 Your health is our top priority at Panacea Medical and Wellness Centre. Our ideal patient’s journey does not end upon attaining an optimal state of health because that’s when they start the mammoth task of maintaining not only their health but also their wellness! Remember both are different but equally important. Reach out to me for any questions at ssatham@panacea.ae I would like to end with a quote from HE The Dalai Lama “The purpose of our lives is to be happy”.