Medical Wellness
Despite the term wellness being misused with increasing frequency and applied ever more indiscriminately, it still describes a major current trend in the global economy: taking personal responsibility for maintaining one’s own mental and physical health, largely at one’s own expense, through a wide range of offerings—from individual treatments to lifestyle changes. However, as was initially suggested in the debates, Medical Wellness is not wellness accompanied by medical supervision and therefore of higher quality, setting it apart from quackery. Rather, it involves the deliberate use of medical expertise in the form of a physician to prepare for treatment or to provide support during treatment itself.
In the view of Lutz Hertel, President of the German Wellness Association, the concept of wellness is focused on the individual and their objectively existing and subjectively perceived sense of well-being. Medical Wellness, Hertel says, refers to a product or service offering—with no bearing on the concept of wellness (see www.wellnessverband.de).
The distinction between Medical Wellness and wellness lies in the use of medical diagnostics. These provide the Medical Wellness offering with a medical basis, identifying and taking into account in advance any risks that specific treatments may pose to the individual. Diagnostics also inform the choice of any subsequent measures that may be medically indicated.
The synergistic cooperation between medicine and wellness achieves greater medical benefits together than either field of expertise can achieve on its own—that is the definition proposed by the German Wellness Association.
Photo: fit1.de/pixelio.de
