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Health is quite a common term used in our daily life. But do we know what health actually means? Do we have any idea about the 7 dimensions of health1?
Generally, we do tons of activities to stay healthy, like eating nutritious food or exercising daily, but are these activities enough to justify this wide term’s complete aspects? We usually refer to health as a physical factor and do a lot of practice to maintain it. But health isn’t just about being physically fit. There is a total of 7 dimensions of health that need to be considered equally.
Health, being a dynamic term along with its dimensions, is closely related to wellness. According to WHO, “Health is a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
However, in today’s era, three definitions of health are used among which –
- The first one says, ‘ health is the absence of any disease and impairment.’
- The second says, ‘ health is a state that allows the individual to cope with all daily life demands adequately.’
- The third definition says,’ health is a state of balance, an equilibrium established by an individual within himself and his social and physical environment.’
However, The actual meaning of this word lies in between these definitions.
Now talking about wellness, as defined by the WHO, it is ” the optimal state of healthy individuals and groups” However, NCBI defines this concept as a “holistic integration of physical, mental, and spiritual well being, fueling the body, engaging the mind, and nurturing the spirit.” Thus, wellness is closely related to health. In simple words, we can say that wellness is a state of living a healthy lifestyle.
7 Dimensions of Health: A Simple Definition
There are 5 primary health dimensions which are physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and spiritual. However, with the concept of wellness included, there is a total of 7 dimensions of health, which are:
- Physical
- Emotional
- Intellectual
- Social
- Spiritual
- Environmental
- Occupational
Physical Health
Physical health is one of the most addressed dimensions among the 7 dimensions of health. It is an ability to maintain a healthy quality of life that allows us to get through our daily activities without unique fatigue or physical stress2.
Physical Health Check
A few factors help check our state of physical health among the 7 dimensions of health. These are:
- Checking health numbers like cholesterol level, weight, blood pressure3, and blood sugar levels.
- The annual physical checkups.
- Avoiding the use of tobacco/alcohol products.
- Getting a sufficient amount of sleep.
- Having an established exercise routine.
- Make healthy meal choices whenever possible.
- Opting for walk/ bike to class or office instead of bus/car
Tips for Maintaining Physical Health
Physical health among the 7 dimensions of health is a central part of addiction recovery because addiction comes from damaging physical effects. Physical wellness is one of the easiest dimensions to find resources for its maintenance. Effective ways to maintain physical health are as follows.
- Exercising for about an optimum time can increase our energy level, maintain our brain functions, and heart’s health up to level. We can even opt for taking advice from health and fitness professionals to start as a beginner. To know more, click here.
- Getting an adequate amount of sleep.
- Learning to recognize any illness at its possible early stage. There are various healthcare options we can opt for determining our health and the recovery process. To know more, click here.
- Taking Control over our meal portions.
- Stoping or, if possible, ending the habit of smoking.
- Limiting the chronic consumption of alcohol
- Prioritize our safety at first while driving and performing other related tasks.
- Eating healthy and nutritious food and drinking an adequate amount of water.
Emotional Health
Emotional health is an ability to understand ourselves and cope up with the mental challenges our life brings. It’s an ability to acknowledge and share our feelings of anger, fear, sadness or stress, hope, frustration, love, happiness, and so on and effectively challenging them. It’s the most important dimension among the 7 dimensions of health as it’s the most struggled dimension in terms of being maintained among the general population.
About 44 percent of the United States’ current adult population is are dealing with mental illness due to the deep stigma of mental health, which exists among people for their mental health. However, now awareness is being generated among the people against this stigma.
Emotional Health Check
A few factors help check our state of emotional health4 in the 7 dimensions of health. These are
- Our ability to balance professional and personal life
- Our knowledge of effective ways of reducing stress?
- Our ability to make life decisions with limited stress and worry
- Our ability to set up our priorities
- Our ability to ask whenever we need it
- Our ability to set personal boundaries against the negative feelings
Tips for Maintaining Emotional Health
Now, mental health awareness among people is being generated more successfully. Therefore, this dimension among the 7 dimensions of health is being given equal importance and care. Here are some tips for maintaining mental health at work and in other areas of life. These are:
- Maintaining optimism is a practice to shift our views and perspective from being extremely negative to positive with reality.
- Practicing mindfulness. It’s one of the most effective ways to become mentally strong and flexible. Mindfulness helps us to practically deal with our current situation rather than worrying about the future or being absorbed in the past.
- Practicing reframing which helps us to combat the unnecessary anxious feelings invented by our mind.
- Investing some of our time in developing some favorite hobby
- Tune in with our thoughts and feelings
- Learning time management
- Practicing stress management tricks and techniques
Intellectual Health
Intellectual health among the 7 dimensions of health encompasses our creativity and stimulates our mental activities. It helps to open our minds to new ideas and experiences beneficial for our personal and professional growth.
A person with great intellectual health desires to apply and learn new skills, improve their existing skills, and seek new challenges and experiences, and knows how to utilize the resources available at its best to acquire knowledge. It is developed through academics, professional careers, cultural involvement, and hobbies.
Intellectual Health Check
There are a few factors helpful in checking your state of intellectual health in the 7 dimensions of health. These are:
- Our participation rate in class
- Our ability to be open to new ideas
- Our ability to seek personal growth through learning new skills
- Our lifelong willingness to learning opportunities and stimulating our mental health
- Our ability to apply the knowledge gained in the class in our practical life
Tips for Maintaining Intellectual Health
Among the 7 dimensions of health, intellectual health plays an important role in the growth of our professional and personal life. Here are some tips which can be utilized for strengthening our intellectual health
- Building our library of resources that provides us access to a wide variety of resources helpful in the development of our intellectual capability as well as in expanding our knowledge
- Joining some professional development classes
- Encouraging ourselves to attend brainstorming sessions at our workplace and seek good collaboration opportunities.
- Learning or perfecting a foreign language
- Seeking out people who challenge us intellectually.
- Reading a lot
- Learning to appreciate art
- Attending any course or workshop
Social Health
Social health among the 7 dimensions of health refers to our ability to interact with social life successfully and to live up to the expectations and demands of our roles in the global community. It usually means learning good communication skills, developing positive relationships with others, and creating your family and friends’ strong support network. Respecting others and ourselves, our contribution to the community and the world is included under social health.
Social Health Check
There are a few factors helpful in checking our state of social health in the 7 dimensions of health. These are
- The amount of time we spend with our family members and our friends
- Our ability to enjoy spending time with others versus the time spend in solidarity.
- The positive and rewarding relationships we have with others
- Our efficiency to enjoy exploring diversity by interacting with people of other cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs
- Our interest in joining clubs and organizations
- Our interest in attending public gatherings, occasions, and events
- Our frequency of interacting with new people
Tips for Maintaining Social Health
Social health is an important dimension among the 7 dimensions of health and is the most challenging dimension to be maintained. Social awkwardness is a common problem majority of the population deals with. It affects the personal as well as the professional life of any individual. Here are some tips useful for developing social health. These are
- Attend weekend life councils
- Please participate in co-curricular activities to develop our leadership skills and abilities and enhance our personal and scholastic development.
- Cultivate healthy relationships
- Contributing to our community
- Rather than fighting alone within ourselves, share our feelings with our trusted people.
- Practicing the habit of sharing our knowledge and skills with others
- Communicating our thoughts, feelings, and ideas
- Stoping the habit of self subrogating ourselves.
- Learning to accept the change
- Learning to accept and respect others individuality without losing our own
- Getting ourselves involved with others.
Spiritual Health
Spiritual health among the 7 dimensions of health refers to having a set of guiding beliefs, principles, and values that actual meaning and purpose along with the right direction to our lives. It’s an ability to develop congruency between values and action while realizing a common purpose that binds the creation together and contributes to our spiritual health and wellness. A spiritually well person always seeks harmony and balance between what lies within and what lies outside sources.
Spiritual Health Check
There are a few factors helpful in checking our state of spiritual health in the 7 dimensions of health. These are
- Do we make time for our relaxation in a day?
- Do we make time for prayer and meditation?
- Do we values work as a guide for your decisions and actions?
- Do we accept others’ points of view even if it not similar to your point of view.?
- Do we know stress-relieving techniques?
Tips for Maintaining Spiritual Health
Spiritual health and wellness play an important role in forming the basic character of an individual. It needs to be maintained well. Its importance is well described in our history. Here are some tips useful for maintaining spiritual health. These are
- Vising or developing an interfaith center which reflects much diverse religion and their traditions.
- Attending mindfulness meditation programs, counseling, and psychological services will help you understand the values of living and working with a caring and mindful community. These are mainly aimed at enhancing mindful awareness among individuals.
- Practice for exploring our spiritual core
- Try spending time alone or develop a habit of meditating regularly for some time.
- Try to be more inquisitive and more curious.
- Stop zoning out and be present in everything we do
- Always listening to our hearts and leading our life with our principles in which we believe.
- Always staying ourselves free and allowing others to be free for being their original character.
- Always seeking opportunities for growth from the challenges life brings to us.
Environmental Health
This dimension comes under the dimensions of wellness but is equally important for the health perspective; therefore, it is sometimes included under the researchers’ 7 dimensions of health. Environmental wellness or environmental health is usually an awareness of the unstable and critical state of the planet earth and the effects of our daily harmful habits on our physical environment.
This dimension among the 7 dimensions of health consists of maintaining a sustainable life that maximizes harmony with the earth and the harm caused to the environment. In other ways, it includes being involved in socially responsible activities for the protection of our nature.
Environmental Health Check
There are a few factors helpful in checking your state of spiritual health in the 7 dimensions of health. These are
- Do we practice recycling?
- If we see any safety hazard, do we try to fix it?
- Do we save energy at the lowest forms, like switching off the lights while leaving the room?
- Do we keep our surroundings clean?
- Is our room cluttered?
- If we see any wasted piece of paper lying on the floor, do we pick it up and throw it into the nearest dustbin, at least?
Tips for Maintaining Environmental Health
As we all are well aware of the need to protect our planet earth and the importance of living a sustainable life, here are some tips for developing environmental health and wellness. These are
- Building our workplace healthy and environmentally friendly
- Always having a recycling program in our both workplace and home.
- Avoiding the use of hazardous materials and opting for environmentally friendly options.
- Avoiding the production of unnecessary and unwanted noise levels and encourage others to do so.
- Practicing conserving water and other natural resources and stoping the junk mail of ours.
- Minimizing the usage of harmful chemicals
Occupational Health
Like environmental health, this dimension also comes under the dimensions of wellness but is equally important for the health perspective; therefore, it is sometimes referred to by the researchers in the 7 dimensions of health. Occupational health and wellness involve preparing and using our gifts, skills, and talents to gain happiness, a feeling of content, and enrichment in our life.
It refers to our attitude towards our work, which develops occupational satisfaction and wellness in us. Achieving this dimension allows us to maintain a positive attitude, along with experience satisfaction from our employment. In other words, Occupational health among the 7 dimensions of health refers to successfully integrating a commitment to our occupation into a lifestyle that is satisfactory and rewarding.
Occupational Health Check
There are a few factors helpful in checking your state of occupational health in the 7 dimensions of health. These are:
- Do we enjoy our working days?
- Are we able to manage the workload of our occupation?
- Are we free to talk with our coworkers or our seniors without any hesitance?
- Have we done at least an internship in our interesting career?
- Do we feel content and satisfied with your job, or are we looking for any job – switch?
Tips for Maintaining Occupational Health
Since work is a central part of most of our lives, it’s necessary to maintain our occupational health. Here are some tips for maintaining and developing your occupational health. These are –
- Creating supportive connections with the people at our workplace like your co-workers, seniors, and boss
- Building existing skills as well as developing new skills simultaneously, which helps us in our occupational growth
- Engaging more in our style of learning
- Carrying out our health risk assessments at regular intervals and promoting preventive health at our workplace
- Providing incentives and favorable rewards to the employees performing at their best level
- The leadership decisions should include the coworkers and the staff of the workplace.
Hence, the concept of health and wellness plays a crucial role in our life, and it’s necessary to focus on all of the 7 dimensions of health to live our life at its best. We can easily learn self-health management tips to maintain our health. To know more, click here.
- Frenk, Julio. “Dimensions of health system reform.” Health policy 27.1 (1994): 19-34. ↩︎
- Bertness, Mark D., and Sally D. Hacker. “Physical stress and positive associations among marsh plants.” The American Naturalist 144.3 (1994): 363-372. ↩︎
- Pinto, Elisabete. “Blood pressure and ageing.” Postgraduate medical journal 83.976 (2007): 109-114. ↩︎
- Prince, Martin, et al. “No health without mental health.” The lancet 370.9590 (2007): 859-877. ↩︎
Last Updated on by NamitaSoren