The Link Between Wellness and Lifestyle

As I wrote earlier, much of disease prevention comes from making smart lifestyle choices every day. Some of these choices come to people naturally, but some do not. If we are to improve the overall state of health, we ought to look at what contributes to the healthy lifestyle and then think how to motivate every desireable behavior.

The place I would like to start is with looking at Wikipedia definition of "Wellness"

Interestingly, this definition breaks out into two distinct parts: Wellness (medicine), that is defined the same as "Health" and emphasizes scientific evidence, and Wellness (alternative medicine), which emphasizes "a healthy balance of the mind-body and spirit". In my opinion you cannot readily draw the distinction and we should rather look at all factors in combination. So here they are:

• Nutrition: What we eat greatly affects our health risks. Knowing and managing your diet can help you keep optimal weight, improve body performance and prevent diseases. Equally important is avoiding toxic and dangerous components.
• Fitness & Exercise: Physical activity has been found to be a major contributor to health. In our society cars have replaced foot travel and more jobs are desk-bound. This has given rise to the diseases of affluence including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and back pain.
• Hygiene: Keeping clean is all about keeping the infections away. Quite simply put, dirt can cost you health and ultimately wealth. The personal hygience, the dental hygience and the food hygiene are equally important to maintain.
• Early Detection: Even with best prevention, sometimes disease is not avoidable. But detecting your health issues earlier can make a huge difference in the speed and chances of recovery, especially for conditions like cancer. Annual physical should not be skipped.
• Mind, Body & Spirit: Last but not least are the mental factors that greatly affect health and happiness. Personal attitude and the ability to think positively can not only contribute to disease prevention, but also improve quality of life.

The list is by no means exhaustive and each of the bullet points can be expanded to a great level of detail, looking into the scientific evidence, personal experiences and various motivating factors.

The interesting and challenging part is finding best ways to put these necessary lifestyle change in action

In addition to internal motivation (being healthy is best for me), I think engaging social factors is equally if not more important, as I noted before talking about "social proof and competition". What needs to be done is break down this motivation per every time of lifestyle incentive needed.