Americans have increased their search for
“healthy,” including “healthy meals”, “healthy weight” and “healthy diets” by
43 percent in the last 8 years, according to Google Trends.
The World Health Organization defines health in the first line of the preamble of its constitution as an overall state of wellness.
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” it states.
Despite this focus, many people still don't know what it means to be healthy.
Barbara Fargotstein, professor of nursing at ASU, said being healthy is all about holistic health, or having the mind, body and spirit overcome whatever physical difficulty may be holding a person back.
“Generally, within nursing, healthy means being able to live up to your greatest potential,” she said. “If you have a chronic illness, it means not letting it beat you but doing everything that you are still able to.”
A healthy lifestyle is doing what you can physically despite physical restrictions – and also maintaining a healthy diet, stimulating the mind and taking part in exercise, whatever your capabilities are, Fargotstein said.
“Many young people think that being healthy means they take part in all physical activity, hiking, biking and water skiing,” she said. “What is physical for an 18-year-old is different than what is physical for an 80-year-old.”
The meaning of the word 'healthy' and advice on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle changes across different academic disciplines.
Siddhartha Angadi, professor of nutrition at ASU, said he doesn’t like to describe a person as being healthy or unhealthy but as either having attained cardiometabolic health or not.
Poor cardiometabolic health means that a person has more than one of the following: a reduction of their good cholesterol; a resistance to insulin, which is the first step to becoming diabetic; hypertension; chronic inflammation or elevated blood sugar.
“The interesting thing is that when one evaluates metabolic health, it is often at odds with a person’s appearance,” Angadi said. “For instance, almost 48 percent of obese individuals and 63 percent of overweight individuals are considered metabolically healthy. Whereas, 25 percent of normal weight individuals are metabolically unhealthy.”
Weight, placement on the body mass index and body fat are not good markers of being healthy, he said.
“The key thing to keep in mind is that being physically fit greatly reduces, if not negates, all the risks associated with obesity,” Angadi said.
Angadi suggests exercising for 30 minutes five times a week and following a diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low in fat.
“It is important to keep in mind that the cardiometabolic benefits of exercise and healthy eating occur independently of weight loss," he said. "It’s important to focus on improvements in the earlier mentioned markers rather than the number on the weight scale. Good health is possible at any size.”
Laurie Chassin, who teaches psychology at ASU, has a different definition for what it means to be healthy.
Chassain said there is physical health, which requires things like sleeping enough, eating right and avoiding substance abuse, but there is also mental health.
“In psychology there is physical health and there is mental health,” Chassin said. “There are two dimensions of physical health – one, being the absence of mental health problems and two, the presence of positive mental health.”
Being mentally healthy does not only mean that there is a lack of mental disease, but there must also be a genuine effort toward positive mental health.
Chassin said good mental health can come from meditating, appreciating the moment and taking time for yourself as ways to maintain a healthy mental lifestyle.
“Being healthy means having healthy positive relationships and positive physical health,” Chassin said. “It means finding joy in living, having a healthy commitment to work, having social ties and social relationships and building communities.”
Reach the reporter at akcarr@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @allycarr2
