Health and Wellness for 2021
Nowadays, the terms health and wellness are usually associated with the numerous programs designed to build healthier lifestyles and to promote better health practices in areas such as the workplace. As our population ages and more and more people realize the value of living well longer, the popularity of such programs will only increase in the next decade and beyond. While the terms health and wellness may appear interchangeable, there are some important differences between the two which may be helpful to understand if you want to use the latter to improve the former.
The Distinction Between Health and Wellness
Commonly, we think of health as the state of your physical body and whether it remains free of illness and disease.
Wellness, on the other hand, is more concerned with how one chooses to lead a healthier and more purposeful life. In other words, it involves the actions people take to improve not just their physical state but other areas such as their emotional and spiritual well-being.
As a result, wellness focuses more on preventative care as a path to well-being whereas traditional health care works to eliminate existing illness or injury. While the concepts aren’t exactly the same, health and wellness are closely linked, and it is difficult to speak of one without including the other.
Why Does the Distinction Matter?
Understanding the difference between health and wellness is important because it can help you concentrate on the aspects of your well-being that you control as opposed to the ones you do not. For instance, your genetics may predispose you toward high cholesterol or high blood pressure or other ailments such as diabetes or cancer. You could also have a childhood accident with health repercussions that last a lifetime.
On the contrary, wellness is something you control. For example, we choose how often we exercise to maintain an ideal body weight. We can choose to avoid behaviors that adversely affect our physical health such as drinking or smoking. We can also seek out counseling if our mental state is unstable. Essentially, wellness is how we actively pursue the goal of better health; it is how we take control of our bodies and minds.
Dimensions of Wellness
In speaking about wellness, people often refer to its different dimensions. While few experts can agree on how many dimensions or categories there are to wellness, it is helpful to look at some of the most important ones and how they are interrelated.
Physical Wellness
This dimension is the one most closely linked with our health. It concerns anything you do to keep your body in top physical condition. For example, following a well-balanced diet, scheduling regular physical exams, exercising for at least 30 minutes a day, and listening to your body for early signs of illness are all important ways to raise your physical wellness.
Emotional Wellness
One of the most important components of our well-being is our emotional health, which concerns our thoughts and feeling towards ourselves and others. While everyone has their good and bad times, how we manage these feeling and our relationships directly impacts our emotional wellness. Some of the ways we can improve it include focusing on the more positive side of life, building strong relationships and learning to accept our emotions no matter what they are.
Workplace Wellness
Workplace wellness deals with getting personal satisfaction and fulfillment from one’s occupation. In other words, focusing on things that in your work that bring you a sense of joy and accomplishment.
Research has shown that when employees are valued and supported, they generally report greater well-being, are more committed to their organization and they perform better. As a result, many companies that used to offer wellness programs as a nice perk for their employees now view them as an essential way to reduce rising health care costs. Because such programs help solve health-related performance issues, they ultimately save companies money.
Spiritual Wellness
Another important dimension, spiritual wellness, pertains to our sense of purpose and meaning in life. People achieve this in various ways such as through organized religion, yoga, or meditation. Many people boost their spiritual wellness by defining their values and their beliefs and how they affect others.
Practicing acceptance and forgiving and forgetting the actions of people who have wronged you is another way to raise your spiritual wellness. In other words, it helps to take stock of events from your past and to use them as positive learning experiences regardless of how they affected you at the time.
While this is by no means a definitive list, the dimensions listed above are the ones that seem to impact us the most. The key takeaway is how they overlap, and how it can be very difficult to affect one without affecting the other.
Wellness Trends for 2020 and Beyond
As we approach a new decade, it’s time to look at some of the biggest wellness trends for 2020 and beyond.
CBD Products Going Mainstream
Cannabidiol has taken the wellness industry by storm. Claiming to reduce pain, inflammation and anxiety, CBD-infused products are poised for a 700% surge in sales in 2020 according to Forbes magazine. For this reason, we’re seeing CBD in everything from drinks to skincare products. Indeed, it is now used in skincare products because of its anti-inflammatory properties. Although the jury is still out on its effectiveness, there’s no doubt that product developers will be anxious to capitalize on this trend in the next decade.
Alternative and Complementary Medicine
Alternative medicine should continue to grow in popularity especially as a complement to traditional western medicine. The most popular forms such as acupuncture, herbal medicine and meditation will become even more common as a means of healing both mind and body. As western medicine fails to address things like chronic migraines, digestive problems and fibromyalgia, more and more people will seek out these alternatives for healing and recovery.
Plant-based Meat Alternatives
Recent studies show that the world population is either consuming less meat or it’s cutting it out completely. Whether people are motivated by health issues or the environmental effects of animal agriculture, plant-based alternatives are changing the focus of the food industry. With companies like Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and JUST scaling up production of their meat alternatives, this market is expected to hit $7.5B by the year 2025. It appears that Burger King’s meatless whopper is a trend that’s here to stay.
Functional Beverages
Drinks that are both good for you and functional are expected to become the fastest-growing products in the beverage category at the start of the decade. For this reason, anticipate more drinks with ingredients like cannabis, nootropics and adaptogens to enhance brain health and performance and to reduce mental and physical stress.
Achieving a Balance
Consequently, we’re seeing new trends emerge in wellness which will affect not just what we eat and how treat illness, but why we buy certain products and what we expect of them. In other words, things like environmental considerations and functionality will play a much larger in our decision-making process going forward.
While we could easily get caught up trying to perfect the different dimensions of wellness, the key is to achieve a balance of these elements. Knowing more about them will enable us to make better choices to help us succeed in our personal and professional lives. Therefore, wellness is critical because it directly impacts nearly every aspect of our lives and, of course, our health. Indeed, the state of our overall health depends upon our approach to wellness.