Week 4 - What is health?

From this morning's Science Times--
You’re Sick. Now What? Knowledge Is Power:
"For some people, more information makes them wackier,
while others get more relaxed and feel more empowered.”

Actually, today's whole special issue is about Decoding Your Health.
Of particular relevance to this class is another article,
Searching for Clarity: A Primer on Medical Studies,
which says that the problem in such studies "is not so much
the differences that are known. Instead, it is the differences
that scientists are not aware of."

In every health class I've had (in the fifth, sixth, eighth, and tenth grades, and now, kind of, wellness), I've learned that health has three realms: mental/emotional, physical, and social.  Wellness, in turn, is the balancing of these aspects of health.  An unwell person, therefore, is imbalanced in these three spheres.  As painfully boring as health class was for everyone at my school (when we weren't making "health shields", we were being told how many diseases you would get if you ever had sex), I have to admit that our health teachers (gym teachers, really) were going somewhere with this theory.   If your physical health is poor, it can influence your mood and feelings.  If you aren't getting out enough or socializing as much as usual, it will probably affect your emotional health.  In the instance of severe depression, your emotional health can even affect your physical health.  So health is not just about seeing a doctor, eating right, and exercising-- it's also about staying happy and interacting with the world.

I would define health as mostly emotional and mental.  I believe that "being well" is a state of mind.  Even if I have a cold, if I am still happy and enjoying life, then I am well.  On a more extreme level, if I have cancer, but I can still be with the people I love and do activities that I enjoy, then I am still well.  There is the obvious definition of health being void of diseases or viruses, but sometime I can't help it if I become sick.  Therefore, it is up to my mental health to bring me back to "being well."

A agree with Kate that being well is different for every person.  Some people might be able to function with a cold, while other people might think it is the end of the world that they are conjested.  That is where I believe that the mental health has a bigger role in the physical health than most people think.

Health to every person is their ideal self. We compare each other to ourself all the time and want what we can't have. We want to exercise, to have no illnesses, to take all the recommended vitamins and minerals. We want to be perfect. The truth is everyone's health, in my opinion, is never like that. We always fall short in one aspect at least.  Health is physical, mental, emotional, neurological, and so many more well beings. There is only so far you can try to stay the ideal Healthy. In my opinion stress would be considered unhealthy, but to me it makes me try harder and makes the less stressful days more sweet. I try to exercise every day but there is only so much I can do and only so much will power I have in me to keep up with my goal. Emotionally, I am still a teenage girl, so of course I have the ups and downs. Neurologically, I feel fine. There are so many varying factors into health it is hard to pin all the aspects that go into it, let alone keep them all to their supreme standards. Many people struggle with all kinds of health, it is just important to main the best "you" that you can.

Health is subjective. Hypochondriacs, though tests show nothing is wrong with them, feel awful. On the other hand, people who take placebo pills--thinking they are real pills--feel better even when no chemicals exist in the pills to make them feel better. So what causes this to happen?

Apparently health is correlated to mental state of mind. This could mean that someone who has cancer could feel perfectly healthy if they aren't healthy, and not realize it until something in their body stops working.  

This leads to questions about the power of "yes"--does positive thinking make someone feel healthier? Does looking for something wrong with our diets, sleeping patterns, exercise make us unhealthy because we are looking for something wrong?

In my opinion, every person has the power to stay healthy by taking care of themselves and not worrying about one's health every second. I guess I'm in Hadler's boat. 

In my opinion health is achieving a balrance in all aspects of you life: social, mental, physical and emotional. To be healthy you need to know your body's limits and attending to its needs. Health is in a way self defined, becuase no one knows your body better yourself. Who are experts to tell you if the way you are living is healthy or not? Again this goes back to the original question of "Expert" or "native" knowledge when judging our health. If i feel good about the health choices i'm making, and i'm not stressing my body or mind in anyway, i am in my opinion healthy.

Everyones body is different, for a health expert to say that a certain method of living will work for everyone is absurd. Ofcourse we need to intake vitamins and other nutritions, exercise, and other things to maintain a well balanced life style, but  how much exersise we get or how much we eat depends on our personal needs.

I was taught in health class that "health" encompasses one's physical, mental and social wellness. That to be "healthy" one must excercise and eat well, manage stressors efficiently, and have social interactions with friends and family. For the most part, I believe these are strong components of one's overall health. Yet there is not one specific way for everyone as a whole to be healthy. The lifestyle for one person (in terms of eating or managing stress) may not be the best lifestyle for another. Certain stressors in an individual's life may affect that individual much differently than they affect their neighbor.

Thus it annoys me when Doctors, reporters and experts of all kind impart their knowledge on us in such a way as to imply that we must follow their new ways of life. A few years ago it was reported that the average individual should drink 8-10 glasses of water a day. It was thought that lack of water may trigger fatigue and that by increasing the amount one consumes, one could increase short-term memory and decrease one's risk for cancer. This may be true in some respects but it has now been discovered that the amount of water necessary for every individual can be widely variable. And the liquid intake for every person doesn't have to come from water (in fact about half of the liquid our bodies need in one day comes from the foods we eat).