Define wellness, health and physical fitness, and explain how the three are interrelated.

Concept understanding — Definition Of Health

What Does "Health" Really Mean?

Most people, when asked, say health means "not being sick." That is the intuition — health as the absence of disease. If you have no fever, no pain, no broken bones, you are healthy. That is a perfectly natural starting point.

But think for a moment. Can a person who has no diagnosed disease still feel exhausted, anxious, or unable to enjoy life? Can someone with a chronic condition like diabetes still live fully, work, and feel well? The simple "no disease" definition fails to capture these realities.

The Precise Definition

The World Health Organization (WHO) gave the most widely accepted formal definition in 1948:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

This is the definition you will encounter in Indian exam contexts (CBSE, NCERT, NEET, etc.). Let us break it down.

Three Dimensions, Not One

The definition names three distinct but connected domains:

Physical well-being — the body functions properly: organs work, energy levels are adequate, no pain or illness. This is the dimension most people think of first.

Mental well-being — emotional stability, ability to cope with stress, positive self-esteem, clarity of thought. A person can be physically fit but mentally distressed (anxiety, depression) — that person is not fully healthy.

Social well-being — the ability to form relationships, contribute to community, feel connected, and function in society. Isolation, discrimination, or inability to interact with others damages health even if the body and mind are fine.

Important

The word complete is crucial. The definition does not say "adequate" or "reasonable" well-being — it says complete. This makes the definition an ideal, a goal, rather than a common reality. Most people are not in a state of complete well-being in all three dimensions at once.

What It Excludes

The second half of the definition — "not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" — explicitly rejects the older, narrower view. A person with no diagnosed illness may still be unhealthy if their mental or social state is poor. Conversely, a person with a managed chronic condition (e.g., well-controlled asthma) can be considered healthy if their overall well-being is good. …

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Wellness (a process), health (a state) and physical fitness (a body capacity) are three linked ideas — fitness underpins health, and the deliberate pursuit of both is wellness.

Definitions:

Wellness — the active, self-chosen and continuous process of striving toward one's fullest potential across all dimensions of life (physical, emotional, intellectual, social, spiritual).
Health — a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Physical fitness — the ability of the body to carry out daily tasks with vigour and alertness, without undue fatigue and with energy to spare.

How the three are interrelated:

Physical fitness supports health: a fit body has efficient heart, lungs and muscles and better resists disease, so fitness is a key building block of the healthy state.
Fitness and health feed wellness: maintaining fitness and health are among the daily choices that make up the wellness process, especially its physical dimension. …

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Q.Define wellness, health and physical fitness, and explain how the three are interrelated.

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