Healthy Habits to a Healthy Future

Normalizing Conversations Around Women's Health

BY ROSEMARY JONES

Beginning on Mother’s Day every year, the Office on Women’s Health celebrates National Women’s Health Week. This week is devoted to encouraging women to prioritize their own health and consider positive health habits they could insert into their lifestyles. This year, the Office on Women’s Health is commemorating more as May 10-16, 2020 will be the 20th anniversary of National Women’s Health Week.

The Office on Women’s Health intends to empower women to get recommended screenings, look into preventative care, get daily exercise, enjoy a nutritious diet, create good mental health habits and practice healthy behaviors. These healthy habits can take different forms for different women, such as quitting smoking, learning stress management, getting tested for sexually transmitted infections or practicing safe sex.

Looking only at the terms “health” and “wellness,” it is hard to find a clear definition. In many contexts, these words are used to describe physical appearance. However, it is important for one’s health journey to recognize that health is not just about physique. This assumed connection between health and physical appearance has many negative repercussions on both men’s and women’s health and their minds, many of which have been affected from a young age.

“WE LIKE TO LOOK AT HEALTH AS STRICTLY PHYSICAL, LIKE WHAT YOU EAT OR WHEN YOU EXERCISE — THERE’S SO MUCH MORE TO HEALTH."

Alexa Glatfelter, a senior applied health science major, said she wishes she knew “the normalcy of [women’s health] in the fact that it’s normal to want to pursue health and [also normal to] struggle with it.”

She said the problem with understanding and promoting wellness for women is “we just look at people in magazines or ads that are advertising health, and no one really knows what that is. Like in my [senior seminar] class right now, we actually have to write an essay defining ‘what is health and wellness,’ which is a lot harder than I thought.”

While definitions across the internet and even among professionals differ, six aspects of personal health emerge on nearly every source. The University of Central Arkansas calls these aspects spiritual, emotional, occupational, intellectual, socio-cultural and physical.

“[Something] I really wish I knew that I’ve come to love, and that I guess is just common knowledge to me now, is the many dimensions of health that there are,” Glatfelter said. “We like to look at health as strictly physical, like what you eat or when you exercise — there’s so much more to health. There’s mental and physical health, but also spiritual, sexual and emotional health. There are so many pieces that we just overlook or try to throw into the category of ‘health is physical.’ But there is so much more to taking care of yourself and being healthy...I think I would’ve liked to be more educated on that.” Irene Lee, a sophomore nursing major, outlines a few common factors that can influence our choices regarding health, especially in this university setting.

“We take on a lot,” Lee said. “We’re trying to navigate this new chapter — new community, new environment, new people and a new level of academic rigor. We have to take that all in and learn how to balance that and sometimes, a lot of the time, it can be very stressful and overwhelming.”

Lee said that the way we manage stress has a direct impact on every aspect of our health. Especially in college, we are constantly offered opportunities to decide how we want to live — when we want to study, what to eat, who we want to spend our time around and so on. Lee encouraged every woman on campus to take time to examine their own healthy and unhealthy habits.

“Schoolwork is the utmost important thing because we are here at college to obtain a degree,” Lee said. “But it’s not the most urgent because you have to take care of yourself so that you will be able to study and do well on exams and papers and classwork and stuff like that.”

Mindy Smith, senior lecturer in applied health science and Director of Student Wellness, recommends applying a faith-central model of health to one’s life in order to achieve a healthier and more balanced lifestyle. “What that means is that my faith and my relationship with God isn’t just one component or part of my to-do list, but that it is actually the centering piece,” Smith said. “The way in which I interact in my relationships, the decisions I make to care for my body with exercise, rest, nutrition and stress management, the way in which I care for the environment from a sustainability perspective — all of that actually ties back to a faith basis. So instead of [spiritual health] just being one component, it’s actually the lens from which...these other components all tie back to.”

Overall, women’s health can seem complicated; but it’s crucial to understand what it is and how to go about creating a healthy lifestyle that can lead to an overall more balanced life. As National Women’s Health Week draws near, the Office on Women’s Health encourages women to share their health tips for all ages, to use social media to promote awareness, to organize events within the community and to use their online tool (womenshealth. gov/nwhw/find-your-health) for customized tips to improve healthier habits.

As we normalize conversations around women’s health, we create better resources and futures for ourselves and the women in our lives.

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@womenshealth

#NWHW #FindYourHealth