Many people consider health and wellness to be one and the same, and while they can impact each-other, they are still ultimately two different concepts.
Health is more to do with a state of being, and how your body is operating, whereas wellness is more to do with your lifestyle, factoring in your surroundings and how you treat your body, Health is the goal, and wellness encompasses the many areas of our life that factor our health.
There are elements to wellness that, while they may be ultimately beneficial for you on your journey to health, might leave you slightly worse for wear, and there is a possibility for us to be healthy but not be completely well. It’s all about maintenance and balance. This just goes to show the cyclical nature of wellness, and how factoring in restorative and rejuvenating tendencies to your life can often times be the last step in the wellness cycle.
Life in practice is fraught with stresses, and these stresses can have negative impacts on your health if they’re left to get out of hand. Stress can only impact wellness to a degree, as wellness is more down to conscious choices and determination to self-care, and some of these choices can alleviate stress and its impact on your health.
So what actually can wellness include?
Wellness isn’t just how well we take care of ourselves physically, it can go much deeper than that. There are multiple components to your wellness, however there isn’t a pre-set list and everyone will have their own definition of what wellness includes. Typically the biggest two are physical and emotional wellness, as these are the two that can impact your body and mind the most, however the list can stretch far beyond that.
Occupational wellness has recently been brought into light due to the pandemic, with a huge amount of the population having to work from home, and there being a big divide in the workforce regarding who did and didn’t want to return to the office. While there are many studies citing many different figures, some studies have said that only 1 in 5 people would want to return to the office every day, with many people taking the stance of a split approach between working from home and working from the office. This could primarily be down to having the capacity to have a better work-life balance when working from home, or having more time to relax and unwind due to the lack of a daily commute.
However, there could well be the inverse of this, with some people struggling with working from home due to a lack of a social office environment, or feeling anxiety towards returning to the office, an unfamiliar environment for everyone over the last year. Occupational wellness ultimately is about being happy with your work, either through the jobs you do, when you do them, how much you do, and keeping all of that in balance.
Speaking of the social aspect of office working, social wellness has also been thrown into the spotlight due to the inability of being able to see people face-to-face. Having beneficial interactions with friends on a regular basis (or a basis that works for you) can have benefits not only on your emotional wellness, but helps reduce the feelings of isolation and anxiety which can also have adverse physical impacts on your body such as migraines, heart palpitations, and fatigue.
The last element of wellness that we’ll include here (however as we’ve said, there are many many more) is environmental wellness. This is entirely down to the spaces that you occupy on a day to day basis, and can cover a wide array of different factors. On a surface level, this can just mean being in an aesthetically pleasing and relaxing environment in order to alleviate any stress that you might experiencing. On a more in-depth level, you could look at the environment you’re in and see how beneficial it is for you with regards to physical health. By this, you’d be looking at airflow and ventilation, heat, air quality, etc.. Anything that can directly impact your bodily conditions. These conditions could be solved with something as simple as buying plants to help with aesthetics and air purification, air conditioning to regulate heat, water filters to drink truly clean water, or even just rearranging your existing furniture in a more conscious way with regards to your environmental wellness.
If I’m changing all these aspects, how could CBD fit into that?
As mentioned earlier, physical and emotional wellness are probably the two biggest components to wellness overall, and are the two main categories that CBD can impact the most.
With regards to emotional wellness, in the same way that people misconstrue health and wellness at large, many people think mental health and emotional wellness are one and the same. Mental health is the absence of mental illness, whereas emotional wellness is the practice you engage in to aid your mental health. Many people will practice mindfulness techniques to re-center themselves, or to try and let go of stress and anxiety. Many people will also use CBD oil tinctures in conjunction with these meditative practices, as CBD can have a naturally relaxing and anxiety-alleviating impact on the mind, which can make practicing mindfulness or meditation easier for people who have a hard time switching off.
In terms of physical wellbeing, this is one of the components to wellness where you can almost think of it as a 2-stage process. You have the act of physical activity in order to promote wellness, however dependent on the exercise undergone, there may be secondary issues that come up as a result of it. For example, muscle tension after running, or sore & rough hands after exercising with equipment. In these instances, a CBD product that’s slightly more targeted and nourishing may be in order, such as our CBD balm. This can aid joint and muscle recovery post-exercise in the applied area, all the while nourishing the skin with shea, mango, cacao, and coconut butters.
Or perhaps, if you just want to take an evening to yourself and rejuvenate and reinvigorate yourself, then one of our CBD bath bombs can nourish your skin, create a multi-sensory experience, and help you fully unwind to help kickstart your wellness journey.
References:
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4535518/
- https://www.integrativenutrition.com/blog/difference-between-health-and-wellness
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing#publications
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/socialcapitalintheuk/2020
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/personalwellbeingintheukquarterly/april2011toseptember2020
- https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/areas-of-interest/public-health/national-study-of-health-and-wellbeing/adult-psychiatric-morbidity-survey-2022-survey-consultation-findings
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/measuringnationalwellbeing/april2018tomarch2019
- https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/world-economic-forum/davos-agenda/perspectives/the-priority-for-workplaces-in-the-new-normal
- https://inews.co.uk/news/health/fewer-than-one-in-five-employees-want-to-return-to-the-office-full-time-915066
- https://www.conehealth.com/services/behavioral-health/8-ways-to-better-social-wellness/
- https://bioneurix.com/blogs/blog/what-is-social-wellness-and-why-does-it-matter
- https://www.nnva.gov/2585/Environmental-Wellness
- https://www.nih.gov/health-information/environmental-wellness-toolkit
