Do you know what health really means?

Some things in life are so important that we can even label them “vital” - just like when we talk about “vital signs” in medicine. But, sometimes, we start to perceive even those vital elements as banal, as they can become simply normal and seemingly obvious.

And the truth is that the question of being “in good health” rarely comes up in our minds, unless we are in pain or otherwise having health troubles. That’s not surprising - most of us aren’t hypochondriacs, and in our minds we’ve come to understand “healthy” as “the absence of disease”.

But how did we come to that point, especially considering that our health is one of our most precious possessions?

Part of it comes down to being human. We generally fear the unknown and try to avoid it - and death is one of our ultimate fears.That fear of having to face the unknown, things that we don’t really know how to handle - such as, the diagnosis of having a disease - can lead people to avoid going to the doctor for a check-up. There are many people who would simply prefer to not know, as that enables them to carry on in blissful ignorance. Of course, that is everyone’s right, to live one’s own life and take care (or not) of one’s own health.

Moreover, the design of most healthcare systems today is actively encouraging the negative definition of health, and opens up for disease only, the rest being of little relevance. So, in today’s medical field, we would wait until someone began to actively demonstrate symptoms before trying to intervene and “treat” the disease. By then, the beneficial outcomes are ameliorating symptoms, essentially “living with it”.

But that stance has taken on such a power in today’s world that it has led us, as a culture, to not fully develop other possibilities. The negating, “health = absence of disease” doesn’t take into account the possibility of actively considering the ways that we can improve daily health and longterm outcomes by checking as deeply as possible the inner workings of the body.

For example, what if we could predict that a person would develop diabetes in 5 years? Or if we could see that a businessperson or a professional was going to experience burn-out in 6 months? What if we could see, even in the absence of any visible symptoms, then how could these problems be prevented by taking action today? Or what if you could know if the coffee or dairy you have on a daily basis are good for you, in relation to your genes? Or knowing before taking a contraceptive pill or a pain killer if it's the appropriate molecule or it's harmful for your health? What if having more energy, more focus and broadly speaking better performance could be solved by being “healthier”? And not lastly, being more emotionally balanced in your relationships, and enjoying more life’s moments?

Above all, being in good health is not only about having good numbers on your health reports and not having a disease, is about feeling well and living life to the fullest.