What Is Health? (Video)

What is Health

If you want to maintain or improve your health, or help others do so, a good place to start is with an understanding of exactly what health is.

To answer that question, we can start with an idea on which we can all likely agree. Health, without question, is a journey. Health is a changing condition. Health has its ups and downs. Health is affected by what we eat, how we sleep, how much physical activity we engage in, our interacting with family and community, and medical care and treatments.

The dictionary defines health as “the state of being free from illness or injury.” Certainly that is part of being health, but is it all of it?

The World Health organization doesn’t think so—they define health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”  Thats seems more complete, but what exactly is meant by well-being?

Maybe the Encyclopedia Brittanica can help. They say health is  “…the extent of an individual’s continuing physical, emotional, mental, and social ability to cope with his or her environment.”  But isn’t there more to life than coping with the environment?

Here’s our definition of health. 

Health is the dependable operation of the body’s systems so as to support—and not inhibit—the individual’s ability to do what he or she wants to do.

This definition offers each of us a practical way to assess our health status and enable us to take specific actions to improve it. How dependable are our body’s systems? How much do they support what we want to do in life?

Our life-long journey to create and maintain health is best traveled on the road of understanding. But when we’re trying to make an informed decision about just about any aspect of health, we can quickly find ourselves sifting through a haystack of information seeking a needle of understanding.

Think about the number of companies that have a financial interest in the health decisions we make—companies that produce, process and distribute food, manufacture medical drugs, and prescribe those drugs—generating combined revenues of 6 trillion dollars a year. You can see why it’s almost inevitable that you will be immersed in an ocean of information, and misinformation, about things that affect health.

Taking the road to better health through real understanding isn’t necessarily easy, but it is fundamentally simple:

• Identify reliable sources of information
• Understand what they are saying
• Apply that understanding to ourselves and others

As you get better and better at doing this, you’ll be more confident that you’re on the right road.  We’re here to help.