IELTS Health Vocabulary: 40 Words for Speaking & Writing

Health appears in every part of IELTS: a Part 1 question about whether you exercise, a Part 3 discussion about healthcare funding, a Task 2 essay about obesity. What makes it different from other topics is how far apart those registers sit — Part 1 wants you to sound like a person talking about your week, while a Task 2 essay about public health wants formal, precise language.

So this list is built around that split. Forty items, each marked W (Writing), S (Speaking) or both.

Nouns (16)

Word	Use it like this	Use
sedentary lifestyle	lead a sedentary lifestyle	W
life expectancy	rising life expectancy	W
obesity	tackle childhood obesity	both
wellbeing	improve mental wellbeing	W
chronic illness	live with a chronic illness	W
preventive care	invest in preventive care	W
healthcare system	a free healthcare system	both
nutrition	poor nutrition	both
mental health	mental health support	both
immune system	weaken the immune system	both
symptom	show symptoms of stress	both
processed food	cut down on processed food	both
epidemic	an obesity epidemic	W
vaccination	a vaccination programme	W
stress	be under a lot of stress	both
diet	follow a healthy diet	both

Verbs (12)

Word	Use it like this	Use
prevent	prevent illness	both
diagnose	be diagnosed with something	both
treat	treat a condition	both
cure	cure a disease	both
recover	recover from an illness	both
cope with	cope with stress	both
maintain	maintain a healthy weight	W
suffer from	suffer from anxiety	both
exercise	exercise regularly	both
consume	consume too much sugar	W
boost	boost your immune system	both
cut down on	cut down on salt	S

Adjectives (12)

Word	Use it like this	Use
overweight	become overweight	both
balanced	a balanced diet	both
contagious	a contagious disease	both
unhealthy	unhealthy eating habits	both
widespread	widespread among young people	W
fatal	a fatal condition	W
elderly	the elderly population	W
sugary	sugary drinks	both
long-term	long-term health effects	W
harmful	harmful to your health	both
severe	severe symptoms	both
addictive	addictive substances	both

That is 16 + 12 + 12 = 40 items. Thirteen are W, one is S, and 26 work in both — a high overlap, because health is something people genuinely talk about in ordinary life.

The three sub-topics health always splits into

Health questions look varied but almost always fall into one of three buckets. Knowing which one you are in tells you which words to reach for.

1. Personal habits — Do you exercise? What do you eat? How do you relax?

Speaking Parts 1 and 2. Use the plain items: exercise, diet, stress, cut down on, sugary, unhealthy. This is where formal vocabulary actively hurts. Compare:

❌ “I endeavour to maintain a balanced nutritional intake and engage in physical activity thrice weekly.”

✅ “I try to eat properly, though I’m not great at it. I go to the gym maybe three times a week.”

The second answer is better IELTS English, not worse. It is fluent, natural and still specific.

2. Public health and policy — Should healthcare be free? How can governments reduce obesity?

Speaking Part 3 and Task 2. Now the formal set earns its keep: preventive care, life expectancy, epidemic, sedentary lifestyle, healthcare system, widespread.

3. Mental health and modern life — Is modern life more stressful? Do people work too much?

Both skills. Use wellbeing, cope with, stress, mental health, long-term. This bucket has grown noticeably in recent years and overlaps heavily with work questions.

Identifying the bucket before you answer takes two seconds and prevents the most common failure in this topic: giving a policy answer to a personal question.

Common mistakes

1. Advice is uncountable. Advices is one of the most frequent errors in health essays. Use advice, a piece of advice, some advice.
2. Diagnosed with, suffer from, recover from, die of. These prepositions are fixed and examiners notice them.
3. “Healthy” describes people and habits, not food quality alone. Healthy food is fine and very common; nutritious food is the more precise choice in writing.
4. The elderly, not elderlies. The elderly is already plural: the elderly are more vulnerable.
5. Exercise is uncountable as a noun. I do exercise or I exercise — not I do exercises unless you mean specific movements.
6. Cure vs treat. You treat a condition you cannot fix, and cure one you can. Writing cure obesity or cure stress sounds wrong.
7. Don’t medicalise Part 1. I have been experiencing elevated stress levels in answer to “How do you relax?” is the single clearest example of memorised language in the whole test.

Building a Task 2 paragraph

Health essays often ask for causes and solutions. The structure that works:

1. Name the cause precisely — sedentary lifestyles, not people are lazy.
2. Explain the mechanism — because most jobs are now desk-based and cities are designed around cars.
3. State the consequence — which has driven a measurable rise in obesity and chronic illness.
4. Propose something specific — investing in preventive care costs less than treating conditions later.

Step 4 is where health essays most often weaken, because “the government should raise awareness” is what everyone writes. A specific proposal — subsidised sport facilities, taxes on sugary drinks, redesigned cycling infrastructure — is what makes the paragraph yours.

Practising them

Because health has one of the highest both counts in this series, it is a strong topic for building genuinely active vocabulary. Take the 26 both items and use them in real sentences about your own habits, family and city. Say them out loud — these methods work alone.

Health overlaps most with technology (screen time, sedentary work) and with environment (air quality, urban design). The full series is in IELTS vocabulary by topic.