My Conception Of Health

When I was 9 years old, the sudden death of one of my cousin changed forever my conception of health. David and I used to hang out a lot together. I did not notice anything different on him. He seemed like any other child our age. He seemed healthy. It is only after his death that my parents told me that David died of Sickle cell disease. It took me sometime to realize that even a healthy looking person could be sick.
I used as many people to take health for granted. For me a sick person was one that had fever, was extremely skinny and so on. Basically I had all kind of stereotypes.
Later on, at school I learned more about the importance of health and wellness and how to be healthy. Through classes taken during my middle and high school years, I came to realize that Wellness and health are undoubtedly intertwined. They can’t exist without the other. Theses classes taught me how things that we do or foods that we eat on a daily basis can affect our health. Being healthy is not a one-time thing. It is a day-to-day aspiration.

A person’s health can be accessed through different factors.

The most important factors in determining a person’s health is at first, his environment. Where you live can have a great impact on your wellbeing. I also mean by environment the relationship with people in the community or family. I believe that someone that is loved, happy and surrounded of people that he loves will have more chance of being healthy than someone that is alone, depressed and stressed. More, a person’s behavior can affect his health. I mean by that what you eat, if you exercise and so on. Another factor is definitely genetics. A person can naturally have a poor health or be more susceptible than others to catch a specific

disease.
Personally, my sister is the reason why I tend to pay careful attention when it comes to my health and wellness. My sister, Nene, is a technical adviser at Population Services International (PSI). Each time that she comes back from a third world country, she tells me about malnutrition, how people and often children suffer from lack of water or food and how unhealthy lifestyle kills people. I vowed since then to benefit from the chance that I have to be in a country where having drinking water or food is not an issue. More, I promised to myself to have the healthiest lifestyle possible. For that I started with small steps such as exercising, drinking a lot of water, eating fruits and avoiding too much salt or sugar.
Having a healthy lifestyle can be difficult. There is plenty of easy ways like junk foods that are available. I, from time to time, do not respect my diet and eat for example fast foods and drink sodas. Having friends around me that do not always understand the importance of having a healthy life does not help me to stay in track. Also, I have never been an athlete. Going to the gym has always been a challenge. So far, I try to go twice a week. I hope, as time goes by, this new lifestyle will be easier to follow. I think in order to stay in track people should have a role model.
Parents, teachers and role models show us the way to go. They are people we can rely on to indicate what we do right or wrong. They encourage us to do what is best. A child who sees his parents, teachers or role model adopting a healthy lifestyle will probably do the same. At first, it might be by imitation but with time he or her will eventually understand the values that this person was trying to pass on to him or her.