Proposing an avenue for suboptimal health research through the lens of tourism

The COVID-19 outbreak has posed tremendous threats to both global health and individuals’ psychological and physiological well-being. Scholars across the social and medical sciences are calling for multidisciplinary research regarding how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected global health [1]. As daily stressors continue to accumulate, the number of people reporting health complaints that cannot be detected by laboratory measures is on the rise [2,3]. These conditions can be complex and challenging to define but are generally deemed as “suboptimal health” [4]. Suboptimal health status (SHS) refers to a reversible state between health and illness [2]. It is characterized by health concerns (eg, back pain, headache, chronic fatigue) and constellations of symptoms (eg, anxiety, depression) that can affect one’s cardiovascular system [3,5,6], digestive system [7], immune system [4,8], and mental status [9,10]. Guidance from traditional Chinese medicine as reported by the China Association of Chinese Medicine suggests that SHS also hinders one’s adaptability, physiological state, and vitality [11].