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Stay Young Longer- The Wellness Approach

Stay Young Longer- The Wellness Approach February 20, 2014Magazine0 Comments

Thursday Thought

What Nutrition Can Do For You: What is Wellness?

Christina Markos

Wellness is a buzzword, but what does it actually mean for your overall health? There are health and wellness programs and courses, guides and magazines all around us. To live a wellness-filled life, you must think about living a balanced life. While nutrition is a very big part of living a balanced lifestyle, there are other factors that go into wellness. Adelle Davis believed strongly in what nutrition can do you for your mind and body but also knew there wasn’t just one way to be healthy overall. In an introduction she wrote for Stay Young Longer, by Linda Clark, Davis had some pretty amazing insight into wellness:

As important as nutrition is, it is not the whole story behind robust health and a long, rewarding life. The best nutrition can only correct problems which have their origins in faulty nutrition. Our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual counterparts are so intricately interwoven that it is impossible to separate them or to deal with them as individual entities. To be truly healthy, these four facets of personality must be held in balance. Literally thousands of times upon thousands of times, fragmentary approaches to health have been shown to produce fragmentary results. Unless nutritional, physical, psychological, and spiritual means are all taken into consideration, one is treating only symptoms rather than the whole person, and optimum results can never be achieved.

Adelle wrote that back in 1961- what incredible foresight she had! Wellness takes into account our physical , mental, emotional, and spiritual counterparts and asks us what we need in order to live our best life. We can be eating extremely healthy and exercising but how are our stress levels? Our sleep? Our moods? It is a great way to check in with yourself and ask yourself if you are trying to live a balanced life. Simply eating healthy or doing rigorous exercise isn’t the way to a long rewarding life. We all need to find ways to de-stress, deal with emotional issues in a healthy way and learn what works the best for our individual needs overall. Is your body strong? Your mind clear? Your energy up? These are goals we all need to strive toward. Ever know someone who was dieting and although they were hitting their goals they were always stressed out or angry? That is because we cannot solely focus on one aspect of our overall health. There are great tools now like yoga or meditation or doing something you love for 30 minutes each day that will help you restore clarity of your mind while promoting relaxation. Even having a hobby that you do just for you can really improve mood and promote other healthy choices. When your mind, body, and soul are connected, that is when you are living a truly healthy life, and one that is going to sustain you and add years of happiness and enjoyment to your life. What are the tools you use to live a balanced life?