“Good health ensures a good life”

Defining the concept of health is a difficult feat. The World Health Organisation (WHO) did their job in defining health as-

‘A state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’.

Vague as it is, WHO’s definition simply took two obscure entities like ‘health’ and ‘well-being’ to describe each other. Though, it does bolster that there’s more to health than solely the absence of disease, it is more of an ambiguous description than a definition.

With this definition, health can be measured in several different dimensions. Surely a question was raised in your head, ‘At what point do I consider myself healthy? Is there an optimal endpoint on this quest to health or do I have to continue working on it till the day I die?’

Well, we like to think of it as a continuum because there’s always a scope of improving at its physical, mental, and social aspects. This suggests that the goal should be a minimally acceptable level of health, rather than a state of complete and absolute health. So we focus on progress over perfection or "ideal".

Let's get this murky water that is this definition and concept of health, a little clearer. Suppose, we live in an unfamiliar and strange world constantly subjected to hostile forces threatening to harm us. Darwin would say ‘Adapt!’ and we have.

We have taken the assistance of whatever is helping us survive like better sanitation, hygiene, diets, health education and medical care. These help us adapt to unknown forces and function as normally as possible in society.

This enables us to simply equate ‘health’ with our ‘ability to adapt’, and consequently how we measure health and disease. There are a gazillion hostile forces as mentioned above, like physical disorders, accidents, infections, psychological factors, lack of exercise, poverty, social deprivation, inadequate or imbalanced diet, obesity, poor quality or unsuitable accommodation and lack of sanitation. Add to these poor working conditions, smoking and drug abuse, ageing, weather conditions, foreign travel, inadequate or low standards of medical care.

So if our health is equatable with our capacity to adapt, improving slowly with the advancement in the field of medicine, how do we do our part? The answer is simple, we equip ourselves better against the hostile forces to our best capabilities. We work on things we can work on the best, primarily our diets and lifestyle.

That’s where we at H&H step in, our job is to equip YOU to adapt to the aggressive forces and keep moving forward in your journey towards health.

Be Healthy, Be Happening.