Health is defined as “freedom from disease, sound body and mind, etc.; that condition in which body and mind functions are appropriately discharged.” A continuum of optimum health may exist along a linear scale, ranging from near death at one end to optimum health at the other. The state of health that would allow a person to fully experience life would be considered optimal. There is just one road to health; there is no other way. All lifestyle choices should promote health. Health is dynamic. Everyone should take care of their health since it allows them to fully enjoy life. A country’s population’s health is crucial to its success. A fundamental human right is access to health.
Dimensions of Health
Physical Health
Physical well-being and the absence of physiological illnesses are key concepts in discussions of physical health. It covers things like your weight, disease susceptibility, dietary state, exercise level, and ability to recover from illness, for instance.
Social Health
The ability to get along with others and play a positive role in your family or community is referred to as social health. It has to do with social skills and knowledge. Both as a technique of reaching health and as a component of health itself, positive social interaction can be considered.
Mental Health
It is a state of harmony between oneself and others, a co-existence between one’s own reality and that of other people, and a state of balance between the individual and the environment. Understanding your emotions, dealing with day-to-day issues, and managing stress in a non-destructive manner are all indicators of mental or emotional wellness. Your self-worth, level of self-assurance, and problem-solving techniques are all part of your mental health.
Spiritual Health
Religious belief may be a component of spiritual health, or it may simply refer to the sensation of belonging to a vast environment or world. It is an ephemeral “something” that transcends physiology and psychology. It appears to defy a specific definition because it is a relatively recent idea. Integrity, principles, and ethics are included, as are the meaning of life, devotion to a higher power, and belief in ideas that cannot be explained by “state-of-the art” technology.
Emotional Health
Mental and emotional qualities have historically been viewed as one or two closely related elements. However, a clear distinction is starting to emerge as more information becomes accessible. While emotional health is related to “feeling,” mental health can be viewed as “knowing” or “cognition.” These two distinct characteristics have largely been isolated by psychobiology experts. The mental and emotional facets of humanity may need to be seen as two distinct dimensions of human health in light of this new information. Emotions are the feelings that play a significant part in your life and change your attitude, making it easier for you to make adjustments and feel better about yourself. Emotional fitness and control are components of emotional wellness.
Environmental Health
The internal and exterior environments that a man experiences directly influence his health as well as the health of his community and country. One of the key components of environmental health is sanitation. In a clean home, clean neighborhood, and clean community, the quality of life is evident. The term “control of all those factors in the man’s physical environment that exercise or may exercise a negative effect on his physical development, health, and survival” can be used to describe environmental sanitation.
Other Dimensions
A few other dimensions have also been suggested, such as
- Philosophical dimension (health)
- Cultural dimension (health)
- Socio-economic dimension (health)
- Educational dimension (health)
- Nutritional dimension (health)
- Curative dimension (health)
- Preventive dimension (health)
The Ecology of Health
Ecology is study of interactions between Nonliving components in the environment such as light, water, wind, nutrients in soil, heat, solar radiation, atmosphere, etc.
Human ecology
Human ecology is the study of relationship between humans and nature all intimately connected in a web of interactions.
Health according to ecological concepts is visualized as a state of dynamic equilibrium between man and his environment. By constantly altering his environment or ecosystem by such activities as urbanization, industrialization, deforestation, land reclamation, construction of irrigation cannels and dams, man has created for himself new health problems. Infect, ecological factors are the root of geographic distribution of disease. Therefore, it has been said good public health is basically good ecology. It is now being increasingly recognized that the environment factors and ecological considerations must be built into the total planning process to prevent degradation of ecosystems. Prevention of disease through ecological or environmental manipulation of intervention is much safer, cheaper and a more effective rational approach then all other means of control. It is through environmental manipulations that disease such as cholera, typhoid, malaria and hookworm disease could be brought under control or eliminated the greatest improvement in human health thus may be expected from an understanding and modification of the factors that favor disease occurrence in the ecosystem professor Rene Dubos believe that man’s capacity to adapt himself to ecological changes is not unlimited. Man can adapt himself only in so far as the mechanisms of adaptations are potentially prevented in his genetic code.