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“Health is wealth” is one of the popular sayings almost everyone is familiar with.

A lot of people think health is wealth simply means its cheaper to be healthy and not have to pay for health care or to be sick is costly. This is true but there is more to it.

According to WHO, Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. While wealth is an abundance of valuable possessions or money.

So how are the two related? That’s the purpose of this article.

FACTORS THAT DETERMINE HEALTH
Several factors determine the overall health of an individual and communities. It’s necessary to understand health if we want to know the effect it has on wealth and vice versa.

1. Environment
Environment plays a key role in the health of a person. It is believed that we are the products of our environments. We can’t necessarily control this but we can control those we choose to surround ourselves with and what impacts us.

Also, some diseases are peculiar to certain environments. For example, the Flu is common in cold climate during winter seasons whereas malaria is common in tropical climates. Heart diseases and psychological disorders are more common in the developed countries whereas it is not so in the developing and underdeveloped countries.

Your environment will also determine your access to health care — if it is readily available or not, cost and its quality.

2. Genetics
These are traits that are passed on from generation to generation. Genetics play a role in determining lifespan, healthiness and the likelihood of developing certain diseases. If there is a defect in your genes passed on from your parents, you have little control over this. This will greatly influence your health. Think about someone living with Sickle Cell Anemia, Down syndrome and other genetic diseases.

This is a difficult position to be in — with little control over it. If you can afford the cost of good health care, then you are in a better place. There are advances in gene therapy and hopefully, this will help cure some of the genetic diseases.

3. Income
Income is very important to health. If you can afford a healthy lifestyle, pay for good health care then you should be healthier on average than someone who can’t. You will also worry less and live a happier life. You can read more about the effect money has on happiness here.

4. Lifestyle
Do you drink, smoke or have any bad habit? This will definitely affect your health. Lung diseases are common in smokers. Obesity, heart diseases, liver diseases are common in alcoholics. These are examples of the effect lifestyle has on health. A healthy lifestyle is therefore encouraged. If you want to break a bad habit, you can read an article on it here.

5. Education
Social economic status(SES) is a weighted combination of occupation and education. People with higher SES have better mental health, life satisfaction, freedom from illness and longer life expectancy than people with lower SES — higher SES people are generally healthier.

6. Chance or Luck
This one is tricky. This is something we have no control over. For example natural disasters, war, accidents and other situations that may lead to impairment of health.

FACTORS THAT DETERMINE WEALTH
Several factors can determine the amount of wealth an individual has. Health is one of them.

1. Health

It is only when you are physically and mentally healthy you can think of making money. You can’t perform at a high performance even in the situation where you’re slightly ill. Just ask yourself “How often do you feel like going to work when you have the flu, depressed, stressed, sick”? — almost never. And when you do, you hate it.

2. Environment
If you live in a developed country where the GDP per capita is high, you have more chances of being wealthy than someone living in a less developed country.

The environment you are, also determines what connections and opportunities you are able to get.

3. Family
Inheritance plays a key role in the wealth an individual can acquire. If you’re born into a wealthy family, chances are you will be wealthy too.

Family ties, business, connections and wealth will help an individual to become wealthy.

Genetics also come into play. If your parents are healthy and have good genes, there is a likelihood you have good genes too — remember health is wealth.

4. Work ethic
Hard working people are generally more successful and wealthier than lazy people. Your work ethic determines the amount of energy you put into the work you do.

Working hard alone might not result in wealth as other factors come into play, but it certainly counts.

5. Education
Educated people are smarter, more creative, more ambitious and as a result more likely to become wealthier than other folks who aren’t educated or who are less educated. Just imagine successful doctors, lawyers, accountants, you name the profession.

Self-education and creativity might play a bigger role in terms of great wealth — just think about ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI).

6. Opportunities
Taking a specific step at a specific time. This can make you wealthy. For example, investing early in a business that will blossom years later.
Opportunities present themselves in different ways and the right ones at the right time can open doors.
It’s worthy of note that other factors such as wealth, education and the environment will determine the number of opportunities a person has or is able to create.

Having opportunities is one thing, taking them is another.

7. Creativity
Creativeness and problem-solving have been proven to be beneficial to creating wealth. Most if not all ultra-high-net-worth individuals are creative — Think Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook to mention but a few.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEALTH AND WEALTH
As you can see, the relationship between health and wealth is symbiotic — they work together.

Health is one of the factors that will determine wealth and likewise, wealth determines health.

Rich people make healthier choices than poor people.

When you are healthy you function better, not only physically but mentally as well. You are problem-solving, creative and motivated to go after your dreams.

Wealth is a trigger for happiness. I won’t answer if money can buy happiness or not – happiness is a subjective feeling. I have already discussed that here but it certainly triggers it plus you can afford the things that will make you happy(healthy).

HABITS THAT WILL IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH
Some habits can definitely improve our health. This, in turn, will make us more productive, problem-solving, creative and fall sick less often — which means lesser cost on health care, you save more.

Regular exercise. One of the things we keep emphasizing on ABC Strength is exercise. You need to be fit. If you are not there yet, start with Fitness Basics. Exercising improves your health.

Healthy diet. As you may know, diet goes alongside with fitness. Fitness is 70% diet and 30% exercise. You need to cut out eating junks, unbalanced diet, and drinking sugary drinks.

Go for regular check-ups. The doctor is your friend. You need to go for check-ups. This is especially true as you grow older. You can avoid medical problems such as high BP and heart diseases by going for check-ups. Women can also prevent medical conditions such as breast cancer. It’s optimal you go for checks ups even when you are healthy.

Avoid bad habits. Bad habits such as drinking, smoking, taking drugs have negative effects on health. If you have an addiction, you can learn how to break it here. Other bad habits like having unprotected sex with multiple partners can also result in ill-health health and should be avoided.

Increase your Socioeconomic status (SES). Do you want to enjoy benefits people with higher SES enjoy? Then you need to be higher SES yourself. If you have a high SES, that’s great. If not you can improve your education, knowledge, use of language and occupation. Read books, articles, change your environment and work on other factors that determine health. High SES isn’t about wealth. So work on these things and you are guaranteed to have a high SES.

Go after your passion. If your passion is becoming wealthy — that’s justified. Wealth and health are related. Being wealthy will make you healthier on the average. The process becoming wealthy can be stressful — stress can lead to illness. The point is going after what you have a passion for. It might be religion, love, job etc.

In conclusion, I would like to say the feeling of wealth is subjective. There are people with great wealth, that still feel empty inside and other people with little wealth that feel like they have everything.

The purpose of this article is not another “Why you need to be wealthy” article but to argue that the two — health and wealth are related.

Indeed, I agree that “Health is wealth”!

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