I've noticed that many of my patients don't know if they're healthy or not.  The typical visit starts out with a set of symptoms that they list out for me and a question,  "Is that normal? or Am I healthy?"

It appears that in our current culture, the meaning of health has been distorted into something that is along the lines of a body that is not having symptoms that can be controlled or alleviated with medicine or surgery.  Don't get me wrong, there is a place for medicine and surgery, but they do not abdicate the need for education and personal responsibility, this is a losing and costly proposition for individuals and society.  But that is a topic for another blog.

What concerns me as a physician, is that health is no longer understood in our society, not just by the average citizen, but by the common health and medical professions (at least in practice).  We have gone from being educators of what creates health to just treating signs and symptoms due to the lack of health.  An example of this is giving someone who is overweight a diet pill.  Fat in the human body is not best cured with a pill, but by adding healthy activities like exercising and choosing more nutritionally dense foods, that fill us up and provide fuel for energy, regeneration, and repair.  An example would be to eat a whole potato rather than french fries or potato chips.  I know some will look at this as an oversimplification as to the cause of obesity but it is one aspect that we can control.

The point of this article is to bring out that health does have a definition and it is about our lives being well in every aspect and goes on to stress the point that health is not the absence of disease or weakness.

the World Health Organization (WHO), in 1948, health was defined as being "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity".

To your health, until next time!

Dr. Mathew Stockstad your chiropractor in the Beautiful Mountains of Asheville, NC.