What is health

What is health?

As a doctor who works in preventative and maintenance medicine, it is amazing to watch how people are suddenly concerned for their health. They grab any piece of advice they can on vitamins and supplements and off they go possibly leading to overdose and sickness in the long run as they have simply followed the masses not realising all the underlying chemical interactions that will happen with their food intake and other medications.

Stop, slow down. For all you know your body may not need a top up of zinc, vitamin c or the latest trend of tonic water as you do not want to catch the invisible 'virus'. What happen to taking care of your body before the plandemic? Once the plandemic, social destruction and hysteria is over, will you still be this concerned for your health or will you go back to your old ways?

The way we define things and what we understand and believe about them is more important than we may realise. Our understandings and beliefs influence our thought processes which in turn dictate our attitudes, feelings and ultimately our behaviours in relation to it.

Whether it be an occasion, a person, an item, an idea or even a word. How we understand them effects our past, present and even future outcomes in relation to it.

So my question to you is...

What do you understand about the word HEALTH? Do you know what HEALTH is?

I reject the standard dictionary definition, which states that "health is the absence of disease". I actually believe that this understanding is eventually a pathological one.

Instead I follow a model that was inspired by the practice of many traditions before me. A model that was exemplified by the practice of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) who was known to seek treatment not just for the purpose of curing an ailment but for the purpose of preventing illness and attaining a higher level of health optimisation and wellness.

This is a concept known in Arabic as Afiya. It teaches me that health is not simply a have or have not phenomenon that the previous definition gives, but rather a spectrum of levels.

The lowest level being the inability of the body to accommodate life resulting in death and the highest level being the ability to work at the highest level of function, capacity and comprehension in harmony with ones body while exploring the boundaries of human achievement such as that of elite performers and athletes.

This understanding empowers me with the rationale and ability to seek care even when I am well with the aim and intention of improving my level of wellness or Afiya while the previous definition encourages me not to take action until I am considered or diagnosed to be ill, even if our result are borderline or symptoms sub-clinical.

So which is your definition of health?

One feeds and justifies the thought processes of sick care while the other feeds and justifies the thought possess of health care.