Wellness is
the biggest buzz word on the health care front these days. You read about it in the newspaper and
online, you hear about it on commercials, you see websites developed all around
the word. Many times it is intermingled
with the other two concepts listed in the title: Prevention and maintenance. It can be a bit confusing for people I am
sure, and I think there are some significant differences between the three and
I hope to delineate those here now.
The term
maintenance is used a lot of times for health care purposes, even or especially
in my line of work. Some people like to
come in for regular adjustments and what they call maintenance. This is not a bad thing to try to maintain
one’s self in general, unless of course you have a chronic or acute
illness. If you have high blood
pressure, do you want to maintain it?
If your cholesterol or blood sugar level is out of the good range, do
you want to maintain that? No of course
not. But the idea of maintenance is used
sometimes in conjunction with wellness and I just pointed out a glaring problem
with that. Maintenance is not wellness,
it is keeping you right where you are, and most of us, me included, don’t need
to stay right where we are. We NEED to
improve some, or all of our health.
Now, what
about prevention? The idea of
preventative care is almost synonymous with wellness care in many circles. I would strongly object to the linking of
these two words. If you have reached a
certain age, and the stats say you need to have “x” test done regularly
(mammograms, prostate exams, a certain blood test or the dreaded colonoscopy
etc.) and the test comes back positive, then that means you have a disease
process starting, it means you are not well.
Naturally that can NOT be wellness or wellness care since the purpose of
the test is to find out if you’re ill or not.
Again, that does NOT mean these tests are a bad thing, in fact they are much
needed oftentimes. So don’t hear me
knocking running the tests, and please don’t stop getting tested appropriately.
Now, on to the
topic at hand: wellness. The word is used in so many ways, some places
call themselves wellness centers and they are doing botox injections. How is that wellness? Does it make a person any healthier? Of course not. Wellness is a word that implies action and
responsibility. Wellness to me should be
defined as experiencing optimum health in all aspects of one’s life,
physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, relationally etc. It is something that I believe few, if any,
attain for any great length of time, but it is a worthy goal to be striving for
but it’s also something that takes constant attention and tweaking. It should be an ongoing process where we are
continually striving for optimum health.
Can the pursuit of wellness include some maintenance care? Yes.
Can it include getting blood pressure tested? Yes.
But it doesn’t stop there. Those
two things are passive, in that the test or care is performed on us. Wellness should require active involvement
that we as individuals are responsible for doing like exercising, relaxing,
learning to eat better and proper rest.
That is what we try to inspire at our office, people taking responsibility
for where they are on the wellness spectrum, then learning and acting upon
information that can move them forward and closer to true wellness.
So in
summary, maintenance care and preventative care are passive things that happen TO
us. Wellness is something we PURSUE via
our lifestyle choices, and it’s the way to optimum health and well-being. So
with that in mind, take charge of where you are, decide where you want to be, and
then take appropriate action steps to get there. Where you are is only temporary if you decide
to make it temporary. Give us a call, we’d
be glad to help you move forward in your pursuit of wellness!
Until next
time… Be Well!
Dr. Bruce
