Strategies for maintaining your general health: Different ways to help you maintain your overall general health

January 2007     View PDF     View Schedule     En español

Have you ever heard someone say, “I don’t want HIV to take over my life. My life is more than my HIV status”? Perhaps you’ve had similar feelings or felt overwhelmed with trying to manage your health.

This publication provides a different way of thinking about health than what many people may experience at a doctor’s office. The goal is to offer a framework for thinking about a big picture of well-being and provide a path for developing a long-term strategy to promote and maintain your overall health.

Studies have looked at the similarities between people who are long-term survivors of HIV and other life-threatening conditions. People who have spontaneous remissions from serious conditions or who have improved outcomes over time are people who are most likely to proactively address their health on all fronts.

This doesn’t contradict findings that people who see a doctor experienced in treating HIV are more likely to live longer and healthier lives with HIV infection. Nor does it disregard that some people might not progress to AIDS as quickly due to genetic factors, the type of HIV they were first infected with or other factors. Yes, sometimes, outcomes in HIV infection might just come down to luck. In the biggest picture, however, people who proactively address their health on all fronts tend to do better than people who do not.

What is health?

What is health and how do you address it on all fronts? Sometimes health crises arise, and managing them can take over a large part of a person’s life. Is it possible to come up with ways to address your overall health without it becoming a full time job? Part of the goal of a general health strategy is finding the right balance so it makes your life healthier without interfering with it.

Project Inform believes in a health model that concerns the whole being—a bio/psycho/social model of health. This includes physical (biological), mental (psychological), spiritual and social health. It assumes that each of these areas impacts the others.

At the physical level, health is being free from disease or injury and the limitations they might impose. Merely avoiding disease; having healthy bones, skin and teeth; and staying out of harm’s way doesn’t reflect the complexity of our lives. We are more than the sum of our parts and we can be healthy without being perfect. As we expand the definition of health to include how our whole body is functioning, a picture of health that includes a mind/body connection emerges. It doesn’t stop there. Health includes a state of mind, a peace and harmony with ourselves and our physical and social environments.