What Is Wellness? Good Question.

What is Wellness?

Wellness / good health has traditionally been viewed as freedom from disease; thus, if you were not sick, you were considered healthy. This perspective is changing. While everyone agrees that the absence of illness is one part of being healthy, it doesn't indicate whether you are in a state of well-being.

Wellness, as a state of health, is closely associated with your lifestyle. Each person has a responsibility to provide for such health essentials as good nutrition, proper weight control, exercise, and controlling of risk factors such as smoking, alcohol and drug abuse. These things all play a role in wellness.

Wellness research shows that Americans who take care of themselves and manage their lifestyles are healthier, more productive, have fewer absences from work, and make fewer demands for medical services. An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicated that, in one study, the "wellness" approach resulted in a 17 percent decline in total medical visits and a 35 percent decline in medical visits for minor illness. The subjects involved participated in a year-long self-care education program.

Since lifestyle has been found to be the single most important factor determining your pattern of general health, it is important that you be educated to "take charge" of your daily life and to set healthy lifestyle goals. The choices you make have a dominant influence on your health ad wellness. The secret is not in medical care, but consistent self- care. While traditional medicine concentrates on alleviating or curing disease, the wellness approach encourages you to take personal responsibility for your well-being.

Wellness is not the mere absence of disease. It is a proactive, preventive approach designed to achieve optimum levels of health, social and emotional functioning. Wellness can also be defined as an active process through which you become aware of and make choices toward a more successful existence.

A wellness-oriented lifestyle encourages you to adopt habits and behaviors that promote better health and an improved quality of life. It also involves the recognition that you have physical, psychological, social, and spiritual needs, with each dimension being necessary for optimal levels of functioning.

Wellness is a positive approach to living - an approach that emphasizes the whole person. It is the integration of the body, mind, and spirit; and the appreciation that everything you do, think, feel, and believe has an impact on your state of health.

Free Radicals and Antioxidants

In everyday life, our bodies generate free radicals. Normally, the body can handle free radicals, but if antioxidants are unavailable, or if the free radical production becomes excessive, cellular damage can occur. Free radicals are the major cause of aging and declined health. Antioxidants bind with these free radicals, rendering them powerless to help you maintain optimal health.

Free radicals cause cell mutations, damage immune function, cause wrinkles and aging and are a contributing cause behind many diseases including cancer, heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and others. Free radical damage is a factor behind almost every known disease according to some researchers.

Free radicals are caused by the body’s own natural processes. Free radical excesses are further created from the addition of things like toxins or radiation or poor digestive function. Disease tends to create free radicals. We are constantly creating free radicals at an astonishing speed.

The antidote to free radicals is the antioxidant. We make some antioxidants and some are traditionally supplied in the diet (fruits, vegetables). Environmental influences have increased the need well beyond what our bodies are capable of producing, and even beyond diet.

So what are free radicals?

The Truth about Diet Soda

Diet Soda, the Silent Killer?

—By Tom Philpott

| Thu Mar. 1, 2012 3:00 AM PST

Vintage diet sodas from the '60s and '70sRoadsidepictures/Flickr

What is this thing called diet soda? Here are the ingredients of one of the best-selling brands, Diet Pepsi:

CARBONATED WATER, CARAMEL COLOR, ASPARTAME, PHOSPHORIC ACID, POTASSIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVES FRESHNESS), CAFFEINE, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVOR

My favorite line on that list is the "preserves freshness" that follows potassium benzoate. The freshness of what, precisely? The caramel color? Not likely—caramel color for most colas comes from a chemical reaction between sugar, ammonia, and sulfites at high temperatures. Or maybe it's the phosphoric acid? Or the least plentiful ingredient of all, the unspecified "natural flavor"? In plain English, diet soda is artificially blackened water tarted up with synthetic chemicals. That anyone ponies up cash for such a thing surely counts as one of the food industry's greatest marketing triumphs.

Vitamins and Their Specific Role

Vitamins: What They Do

Vitamins have specific role to play in the natural wear and tear of the body. There are many vitamin benefits that have a major impact on our overall health.

Vitamins are divided into two types: fat soluble and water soluble. Fat soluble vitamins (vitamin A, D, E and K) are stored in the fat tissues and liver. They can remain in the body up to six months. When the body requires these, they are transported to the area of requirement within the body with help of special carriers. Water soluble vitamins (B-vitamins and vitamin C) are not stored in the body like the fat soluble ones. They travel in the blood stream and need to be replenished everyday.

Keep reading for a list of the 13 major vitamins and what each does for your body:

An Antioxidant for Aging

An Antioxidant for Aging

Posted on January 27, 2012 by seanw

Astaxanthin—a recently discovered compound which is both a carontenoid and an antioxidant—is quickly gaining attention in the world of nutritional supplements, and even a quick examination of its properties makes it easy to understand why. By all indications, astaxanthin should soon hold a place among the very best ingredients available for use inanti-aging nutraceuticals.

Researchers are finding links between inflammation—brought on by the unchecked activity of free radicals in the human body—and a myriad of debilitating and even life-threatening diseases. At the same time, scientists continue to prove that supplementing with antioxidants is essential to lengthening and improving the quality of our lives. In the category of antioxidants, astaxanthin displays abilities like no other.

Astaxanthin displays antioxidant potency some 14 times stronger than vitamin E, 46 times stronger than beta-carotene and 65 times stronger than vitamin C. While this is impressive in itself, astaxanthin also has the ability to affect many tissues of the body that other antioxidants cannot reach. Astaxanthin is able to bond effectively with lipids and proteins, meaning that it can merge with and protect both cell membranes and muscle tissue, providing a new layer of defense for cells and an increase in both immediate endurance and long-term recovery ability in muscles.

The most important muscle in the human body, the heart, directly benefits from astaxanthin in this same way. Indirectly, astaxanthin also helps the heart with its benefits for blood profiles—astaxanthin works to both lower triglycerides and LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) while also increasing HDL (“good” cholesterol) and lowering blood pressure by strengthening blood vessels throughout the body.

Unlike virtually all other antioxidants, astaxanthin is also able to cross both the blood-brain barrier and the blood-retinal barrier. This makes astaxanthin supplementation an effective and unique defense for both the brain and the eyes. By improving blood flow to the retina, as well as providing a new protective layer within the retina, there is the possibility for its application in the treatment of general eyes fatigue as well as cataracts and age-related macular degeneration (ARMD).

It is believed these same improvements in circulation, cell integrity and antioxidant protection might prove an asset for such afflictions as vascular dementia (brain damage incurred through insufficient blood supply) with greater long-term possibilities regarding diseases such as Alzheimers. The debilitating effects of Alzheimers have been linked with the presence and accumulation of yet another kind of oxidized fat, namely phospholipid hydroperoxides—an oxidized fat that astaxanthin is able to handle as effectively as cholesterol.

To summarize, in astaxanthin is an entirely natural substance with amazing potential in the benefits it offers. As compared to other antioxidants, it is far more powerful in its potency and far further reaching in the vital organs and tissues it is able to provide with effective aid. As we age, it is believed that our own internal defenses begin to malfunction or to slow down, and are eventually overtaken by minor but ongoing instances of damage, with some scientists coming to regard this as what the aging process itself really is. If this is true, it seems astaxanthin will rightfully emerge as one of the leaders in anti-aging supplementation.

To learn more about the benefits of Astaxanthin visit Astaxanthin Product Information.