HealthIn 1948, the World Health Assembly defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” [1][2] This definition is still widely referenced, but is often supplemented by other World Health Organization (WHO) reports such as the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion which in 1986 stated that health is “a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities.”
Classification systems describe health. The WHO’s Family of International Classifications (WHO-FIC) is comprised of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
Aspects of health
Physical health
Physical fitness is good bodily health, and is the result of regular exercise, proper diet and nutrition, and proper rest for physical recovery.
A strong indicator of the health of localized population is their height|weight, which generally increases with improved nutrition and health care. This is also influenced by the standard of living and quality of life. Genetics also plays a major role in people's height. The study of human growth, its regulators, and implications is known as Auxology.
Mental health
Main article: Mental health
Mental health refers to an individual's emotional and psychological well-being. Merriam-Webster defines mental health as "A state of emotional and psychological well-being in which an individual is able to use his or her cognitive and emotional capabilities, function in society, and meet the ordinary demands of everyday life."
According to the World Health Organization, there is no single "official" definition of mental health. Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how "mental health" is defined. In general, most experts agree that "mental health" and "mental illness" are not opposites. In other words, the absence of a recognized mental disorder is not necessarily an indicator of sound mental health.
One way to think about mental health is by looking at how effectively and successfully a person functions. Feeling capable and competent; being able to handle normal levels of stress, maintain satisfying relationships, and lead an independent life; and being able to "bounce back," or recover from difficult situations, are all signs of mental health.
A combination of physical, emotional, social and most importantly mental well-being is necessary to achieve overall health.
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Determinants of health
Main article: Social determinants of health
The LaLonde report suggested that there are four general determinants of health including human biology, environment, lifestyle, and healthcare services.[3] Thus, health is maintained and improved not only through the advancement and application of health science, but also through the efforts and intelligent lifestyle choices of the individual and society.
A major environmental factor is water quality, especially for the health of infants and children in developing countries.[4]
Studies show that in developed countries, the lack of neighborhood recreational space that includes the natural environment leads to lower levels of neighborhood satisfaction and higher levels of obesity; therefore, lower overall well being.[5] Therefore, the positive phsychological benefits of natural space in urban neighborhoods should be taken into account in public policy and land use.
Health maintenance
Main article: Self care
Achieving health and remaining healthy is an active process. Effective strategies for staying healthy and improving one's health include the following elements:
Nutrition
Main article: Nutrition
The updated USDA food pyramid, published in 2005, is a general nutrition guide for recommended food consumption.Nutrition is the science that studies how people eat affects their health and performance, such as foods or food components that cause diseases or deteriorate health (such as eating too many calories, which is a major contributing factor to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease). The field of nutrition also studies foods and dietary supplements that improve performance, promote health, and cure or prevent disease, such as eating fibrous foods to reduce the risk of
colon cancer, or supplementing with vitamin C to strengthen teeth and gums and to improve the immune system.
Personal health depends partially on the social structure of one’s life. The maintenance of strong social relationships is linked to good health conditions, longevity, productivity, and a positive attitude. This is due to the fact that positive social interaction as viewed by the participant increases many chemical levels in the brain which are linked to personality and intelligence traits.
Essentially this means that positive reinforcement from a third party make one more socially adept, in control, and relaxed physically and mentally, all of which are proven to affect the nervous system (UHF).
Sports nutrition
Main article: Sports nutrition
Sports nutrition focuses the link between dietary supplements and athletic performance. One goal of sports nutrition is to maintain glycogen levels and prevent glycogen depletion. Another is to optimize energy levels and muscle tone. An athlete's strategy for winning an event may include a schedule for the entire season of what to eat, when to eat it, and in what precise quantities (before, during, after, and between workouts and events). Participants in endurance sports such as the full-distance triathlon actually eat during their races. Sports nutrition works hand-in-hand with sports medicine.
Exercise
Main article: Physical exercise
A U.S. Marine emerges from the water upon completing the swimming leg of a triathlon. Exercise is the performance of movements in order to develop or maintain physical fitness and overall health. It is often directed toward also honing athletic ability or skill. Frequent and regular physical exercise is an important component to prevention of some of the diseases of affluence such as cancer, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity and back pain.
Exercises are generally grouped into three types depending on the overall effect they have on the human body:
Flexibility exercises such as stretching improve the range of motion of muscles and joints.
Aerobic exercises such as walking and running focus on increasing cardiovascular endurance and muscle density.
Anaerobic exercises such as weight training or sprinting increase muscle mass and strength.
Physical exercise is considered important for maintaining physical fitness including healthy weight; building and maintaining healthy bones, muscles, and joints; promoting physiological well-being; reducing surgical risks; and strengthening the immune system.
Proper nutrition is just as, if not more, important to health as exercise. When exercising it becomes even more important to have good diet to ensure the body has the correct ratio of macronutrients whilst providing ample micronutrients; this is to aid the body with the recovery process following strenuous exercise. When the body falls short of proper nutrition, it gets into starvation mode developed through evolution and depends onto fat content for survival. Research suggest that the production of thyroid hormones can be negatively affected by repeated bouts of dieting and calorie restriction[6]. Proper rest and recovery is also as important to health as exercise, otherwise the body exists in a permanently injured state and will not improve or adapt adequately to the exercise.
The above two factors can be compromised by psychological compulsions (eating disorders such as exercise bulimia, anorexia, and other bulimias), misinformation, a lack of organization, or a lack of motivation. These all lead to a decreased state of health.
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness can occur after any exercise, particularly if the body is in an unconditioned state relative to that exercise and the exercise involves repetitive eccentric contractions.
Hygiene
Main article: Hygiene
Hygiene is the practice of keeping the body clean to prevent infection and illness, and the avoidance of contact with infectious agents. Hygiene practices include bathing, brushing and flossing teeth, washing hands especially before eating, washing food before it is eaten, cleaning food preparation utensils and surfaces before and after preparing meals, and many others. This may help prevent infection and illness. By cleaning the body, dead skin cells are washed away with the germs, reducing their chance of entering the body.
Stress management
Main article: Stress management
Prolonged psychological stress may negatively impact health, such as by weakening the immune system. See negative effects of the fight-or-flight response. Stress management is the application of methods to either reduce stress or increase tolerance to stress. Certain nootropics do both. Exercising to improve physical fitness, especially cardiovascular fitness, boosts the immune system and
increases stress tolerance. Relaxation techniques are physical methods used to relieve stress. Examples include progressive relaxation and fractional relaxation. Psychological methods include cognitive therapy, meditation, and positive thinking which work by reducing response to stress. Improving relevant skills and abilities builds confidence, which also reduces the stress reaction to situations where those skills are applicable. Reducing uncertainty, by increasing knowledge and experience related to stress-causing situations, has the same effect. Learning to cope with problems better, such as improving problem solving and time management skills, may also reduce stressful reaction to problems. Repeatedly facing an object of one's fears may also desensitize the fight-or-flight response with respect to that stimulus -- e.g., facing bullies may reduce fear of bullies.
Health care
Main article: Health care. See also Public health, below
Health care is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well being through the services offered by the medical, nursing, and allied health professions. According to the World Health Organization, health care embraces all the goods and services designed to promote health, including “preventive, curative and palliative interventions, whether directed to individuals or to populations”.[7] The organized provision of such services may constitute a health care system. This can include a specific governmental organization such as the National Health Service in the UK, or a cooperation across the National Health Service and Social Services as in Shared Care.
Workplace wellness programs
Main article: Workplace wellness
Workplace wellness programs are recognized by an increasingly large number of companies for their value in improving the health and well-being of their employees, and for increasing morale, loyalty, and productivity. Workplace wellness programs can include things like onsite fitness centers, health presentations, wellness newsletters, access to health coaching, tobacco cessation programs and training related to nutrition, weight and stress management. Other programs may include health risk assessments, health screenings and body mass index monitoring. Mostly overseen or not mentioned is a group of determinants of health which could be called coincidence, hazard, luck or bad luck. These factors are quite important determinants of health but difficult to calculate.
Public health
Main article: Public health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organised efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals." It is concerned with threats to the overall health of a community based on population health analysis. The population in question can be as small as a handful of people or as large as all the inhabitants of several continents (for instance, in the case of a pandemic). Public health has many sub-fields, but is typically divided into the categories of epidemiology, biostatistics and health services. Environmental, social and behavioral health, and occupational health, are also important fields in public health.
The focus of public health intervention is to prevent rather than treat a disease through surveillance of cases and the promotion of healthy behaviors. In addition to these activities, in many cases treating a disease can be vital to preventing it in others, such as during an outbreak of an infectious disease. Vaccination programs and distribution of condoms are examples of public health measures.
Role of science in health
Main article: Health science
Health science is the branch of science focused on health, and it includes many subdisciplines. There are two approaches to health science: the study and research of the human body and health-related issues to understand how humans (and animals) function, and the application of that knowledge to improve health and to prevent and cure diseases.
Where health knowledge comes from
Health research builds primarily on the basic sciences of biology, chemistry, and physics as well as a variety of multidisciplinary fields (for example medical sociology). Some of the other primarily research-oriented fields that make exceptionally significant contributions to health science are biochemistry, epidemiology, and genetics.
Putting health knowledge to use
Applied health sciences also endeavor to better understand health, but in addition they try to directly improve it. Some of these are: biomedical engineering, biotechnology, nursing, nutrition, pharmacology, pharmacy, public health (see below), psychology, physical therapy, and medicine. The provision of services to maintain or improve people's health is referred to as health care (see above).
Beauty
Beauty is a dominant theme in western art, as evidenced in Nymph with morning glory flowers by Jules Joseph Lefebvre.Beauty is a characteristic of a person, place, object or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology and culture. As a cultural creation, beauty has been extremely commercialized. An "ideal beauty" is a person who is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture.
The experience of "beauty" often involves the interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature, which may lead to feelings of attraction and emotional well-being.
Because this is a subjective experience, it is often said that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".[1] In its most profound sense, beauty may engender a salient experience of positive reflection about the meaning of one's own existence.
An "object of beauty" is anything that reveals or resonates with personal meaning.
The classical Greek adjective beautiful was καλλός. The Koine Greek word for beautiful was "ὡραῖος",[2] an adjective etymologically coming from the word "ὥρα" meaning hour. In Koine Greek, beauty was thus associated with "being of one's hour". A ripe fruit (of its time) was considered beautiful, whereas a young woman trying to appear older or an older woman trying to appear younger would not be considered beautiful. ὡραῖος in Attic Greek had many meanings, including youthful and ripe old age.[3]
History of beauty
The Taj Mahal is an example of symmetry in architecture.The earliest Western theory of beauty can be found in the works of early Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, such as Pythagoras. The Pythagorean school saw a strong connection between mathematics and beauty. In particular, they noted that objects proportioned according to the golden ratio seemed more attractive. Ancient Greek architecture is based on this view of symmetry and proportion. Modern research also suggests that people whose facial features are symmetric and proportioned according to the golden ratio are considered more attractive than those whose faces are not.
A famous depiction of symmetry in Michelangelo's David.Symmetry is also important because it suggests the absence of genetic or acquired defects. Although style and fashion vary widely, cross-cultural research has found a variety of commonalities in people's perception of beauty. Large eyes and a clear complexion, for example, are considered beautiful in both men and women in all cultures. Neonatal features are inherently attractive and youthfulness in general is associated with beauty.
There is evidence that a preference for beautiful faces emerges early in child development, and that the standards of attractiveness are similar across different genders and cultures. [4]
The foundations laid by Greek and Roman artists have also supplied the standard for male beauty in western civilization. The ideal Roman was defined as tall, muscular, long-legged, with a full head of thick hair, a high and wide forehead – a sign of intelligence – wide-set eyes, a strong browline, a strong perfect nose and profile, a smaller mouth, and a strong jaw line. This combination of factors would, as it does today, produce an impressive "grand" look of handsome masculinity.
Beauty ideals may contribute to racial oppression. For example, a prevailing idea in American culture has been that black features are less attractive or desirable than white features. The idea that blackness was ugly was highly damaging to the psyche of African Americans, manifesting itself as internalized racism.[5] The black is beautiful cultural movement sought to dispel this notion.
[6] Conversely, beauty ideals may also promote racial unity. Mixed race children are often perceived to be more attractive than their parents because their genetic diversity protects them from the inherited errors of their individual parents. [7]
Human beauty
The characterization of a person as “beautiful”, whether on an individual basis or by community consensus, is often based on some combination of inner beauty, which includes psychological factors such as personality, intelligence, grace, charm and elegance, and outer beauty, which includes physical factors, such as health, youthfulness, symmetry, averageness, and complexion.
A common way to measure outer beauty, as based on community consensus, or general opinion, is to stage a beauty pageant, such as Miss Universe. Inner beauty, however, is more difficult to quantify, though beauty pageants often claim to take this into consideration as well.
A strong indicator of physical beauty is "averageness", or "koinophilia". When images of human faces are averaged together to form a composite image, they become progressively closer to the "ideal" image and are perceived as more attractive. This was first noticed in 1883, when Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, overlaid photographic composite images of the faces of vegetarians and criminals to see if there was a typical facial appearance for each. When doing this, he noticed that the composite images were more attractive compared to any of the individual images.
Researchers have replicated the result under more controlled conditions and found that the computer generated, mathematical average of a series of faces is rated more favorably than individual faces.[8] Evolutionarily it makes logical sense that sexual creatures should be attracted to mates who possess predominantly common or average features.[9]
Another feature of beautiful women that has been explored by researchers is a waist-to-hip ratio of approximately 0.70 for women. The concept of waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) was developed by psychologist Devendra Singh of the University of Texas at Austin. Physiologists have shown that this ratio accurately indicates most women's fertility. Traditionally, in premodern ages when food was more scarce, overweight people were judged more attractive than slender. Beauty is not solely limited to the female gender. More often defined as 'bishōnen,' the concept of beauty in men has been particularly established throughout history in East Asia, and most notably, in Japan. This is distinct from the idea of being metrosexual, which focuses mainly on the behavior of men in traditionally feminine ways. Bishōnen refers to males with distinctly feminine features, physical characteristics establishing the standard of beauty in Japan and typically exhibited in their pop culture idols. The origin of such a preference is uncertain but it clearly exists even today.
Inner beauty
Inner beauty is a concept used to describe the positive aspects of something that is not physically observable.
While most species use physical traits and pheromones to attract mates, some humans claim to rely on the inner beauty of their choices. Qualities including kindness, sensitivity, tenderness or compassion, creativity and intelligence have been said to be desirable since antiquity. However new research[citation needed] comparing what humans claim to find attractive to their actual mating habits underlines the superficiality of "inner beauty," underlining the fact that the human animal relies on physical traits and pheromones just like every other animal to find a mate.
Effects on society
Beauty presents a standard of comparison, and it can cause resentment and dissatisfaction when not achieved. People who do not fit the "beauty ideal" may be ostracized within their communities. The television sitcom Ugly Betty documents the life of a girl faced with hardships due to society's unwelcoming attitudes toward those they deem unattractive. However, a person may also be targeted for harassment because of their beauty. In Malèna, a strikingly beautiful Italian woman is forced into poverty by the women of the community who refuse to give her work in fear that she may "woo" their husbands.
Chinese Jade ornament with flower design, Jin Dynasty (1115-1234 AD), Shanghai Museum.Researchers have found that good looking students get higher grades from their teachers than students with an ordinary appearance. Furthermore, attractive patients receive more personalized care from their doctors. Studies have even shown that handsome criminals receive lighter sentences than less attractive convicts. How much money a person earns may also be influenced by physical beauty. One study found that people low in physical attractiveness earn 5 to 10 percent less than ordinary looking people, who in turn earn 3 to 8 percent less than those who are considered good looking.[10] Discrimination against others based on their appearance is known as lookism.
St. Augustine said of beauty "Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked."[11] (Source: Wikipedia)