Defining Health
Connecting
the dots to health firstly requires that we understand what the word 'health'
means. Unless we know what this thing, or process, or event, called 'health'
is, we'll have no hope of finding it or achieving it. So, what is health?
WHO Definition
According
to the United Nations, 'Health is a state of complete physical, mental and
social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.1
Note: The
emphasis is on well-being. Indeed, by
employing the adjective ‘complete’ to describe all three domains of well-being,
the WHO definition suggests that health means happiness.
This definition comes from the
Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organisation, and arose from the
International Health Conference which had met between 19 June and 22 July 1946.
This conference, attended by representatives of all 51 members of the UN then, and
13 non-member countries, as well as 10 international organisations, was
presided over by Dr. Thomas Parran, the US Surgeon General at the time.2
Hence the WHO definition
of health is grounded in the contemporary biomedical model, and the mid-century
US public health ethos. And that approach to disease—for it is indeed disease, not
health, that has always been the focus of biomedicine—even at that time, was based
upon molecular biology, and dominated by medical pundits who had been sweeping
through the revolving door of US political, administrative and corporate power.
In this instance, Big Government and Big Pharma.
So, in essence, the WHO
definition arises from a medical system that is grounded in treating disease,
or pathology, not in promoting health. Indeed, its only understanding of health
is to equate it with well-being and, arguably, happiness.
The same biomedical
model applies to the assessment and treatment of the human psyche. Thus the
American model of psychopathology identifies disturbances of the psyche through
its reference textbook, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM), beginning in 1952 as the DSM 1, and continuing to be updated over the second half of the
20th century to today's DSM IV. And
the biomedical approach to the treatment of the human psyche is the same as
that for the human body: with patented biochemical concoctions churned out by
molecular biologists working within Big Pharma.
The Preamble to the
WHO's Constitution also reflects the Allied, post-war optimism in aspiring to
secure happiness, health and security for all peoples everywhere, and to ensure
that international harmony would prevail. For the United States this was a
radical break from its traditional isolationist and non-interventionist
policies. This set of universal aspirations has come to dominate Western public
health policy as well as government and corporate spin ever since.
Note: This aspiration is about making everyone feel good, which is
exactly what well-being is; everyone feeling happy. But as we shall see below,
health, in its traditional meaning, is an entirely different matter.
Note also: The aspiration is American-made; it’s America’s take on
happiness, health and security, not necessarily those of other cultures. It’s
the beginning of our increasingly global, Americo-centric approach to health.
The sentiment of the WHO
Preamble also echoes the rhetoric of the Age of Reason during the late 18th
century. That was a time when the French and American people violently
overthrew their oppressors, in the French Revolution and the American War of
Independence, respectively. From such successes, and of course from earlier
wars, the idea was perpetuated that war could defeat all foes, not just human
foes. Hence our modern Western culture aspires to conquer social foes through
wars: a war on disease, a war on drugs, a war on poverty, and, the most oxymoronic
of all, the 'war on terror'. At the individual physiological level, our culture
battles to defeat pain, discomfort, inflammation, broncho-constriction, and
other unpleasant physiological functions; and, at the psychological level, it
strives to defeat disturbances of thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviour.
Hint: You can often identify such bellicose ploys in pharmaceutical
words that are prefixed by 'anti-', as in anti-depressant, anti-inflammatory,
anti-microbial, and so on.
Note: Disease (pathology), and particularly its accompanying symptoms
of pain/discomfort, deterioration in functions, and its visible signs—as with any symptoms and visible signs
of drug abuse, poverty, and insurrection (terrorism)—are
identified as 'the enemy'. In other words, illness (feeling psychologically or
physically bad) is the foe. And the corollary is: wellness (feeling psychologically
and physically good) is the aim of medicine.
And finally, a society's
optimism after any war resonates to the perennial idea that after the long
night of darkness, there will arise hope and new beginnings; that spring is the
new beginning after the death of winter; that life is resurrected after death.
These themes are readily apparent in the religion that has dominated Western
civilisation for the past 1500 years: Christianity.
Moreover Christianity is
a religion that is founded upon the fear of the Devil, and his (d)evil works—proving
that only a 'D' separates the devil from his deeds. Hence God-fearing Christians
have a moral imperative to overcome anything construed as evil.3
That as many as nine
million 'witches' were hanged, drowned, or burned at the stake between the 12th
and 17th centuries AD, reveals how deadly such righteous opposition to 'evil'
can be. In modern times, we heard
rumblings of this in the political arena from the rhetoric of born-again
Christian President George W Bush, when he named Iraq, Iran and North Korea the'
Axis of Evil'.
Since the English word 'ill'
derives from the Old Norse word 'illr', meaning evil, it's not surprising that the European culture for the past 1500 years has
attempted to root out illness by whatever means.3
Note: If the Church's beliefs about moral conflicts—between God and the
Devil, good and evil, right and wrong, truth and heresy—are applied to health
and disease, we can readily appreciate why our culture came to view illness not
only as both evil and wrong, but also as another thing to fight.
Thus it’s understandable that
the maelstrom of power, money, academia and science that is today’s beast of
institutionalised medicine should view disease as a disorder of function or
structure, as a pathology, an impairment, a malfunction. For followers of this
paradigm, disease is the body going wrong. In the case of psychopathology, it's
the mind going wrong. Whichever way you look at it, disease is construed as
both bad and wrong.3
To summarise, modern medicine flounders
in defining health, for its focus is on disease, on diagnosing disease, on
identifying the microscopic processes of disease, and on treating disease. From
its point of view, health is initially identified by the absence of disease and
that is confirmed, again, by biochemical markers that reveal no impairment is
present. But most importantly, health is readily identifiable when a person
feels good, even happy. Therefore, by this paradigm’s warped logic, any drug
that can mask pain, quell inflammation, stop a fever, or drown feelings of
depression or anxiety, or alleviate the disturbed blood sugar problems of someone
with diabetes, is a superb weapon in the arsenal for the war on disease, and is
therefore to be incorporated into the ‘health system’.
Traditional Meaning of ‘Health’
The word
'health' derives from the Old English word 'hælþ',
meaning 'wholeness'. Going further back in time that Old English word
originated from the Proto-Indo-European language, from the word 'kailo',
meaning 'whole" or ‘intact’. Not only does 'health' derive from 'kailo',
but so do the words 'hale', 'hail', 'hallow', 'holy' and 'heal’. Clearly,
there's no escaping the importance of wholeness when we're dealing with health. Hence
the importance of connecting the dots to events and things in our world—when we know what harms us we can change our lives for the better.3
In essence, ‘health’ expresses a quality of wholeness. And qualities are defined by their relationships.
In many ways health could therefore be construed as being closer to an
adjectival verb (which does not exist in Indo-European languages) than a noun. Thus
health is a process, not an entity or a state of being. Perhaps the reason for
thinking health is a state of being lies in the fact that ‘health’ is a noun;
that we either have it or we don’t. But our bodies and minds consist of a
myriad of continuous events and processes that are ever changing.3
Central to the meaning of health in all cultures, except
ours, is the concept of the vital force. It is the glue that interconnects us,
the energy that powers us, and the intelligence that orchestrates everything in
the universe. That vital force is manifested in each and every one of us
through the intelligent, powerful and interconnecting forces of our whole
being: body, mind and spirit.
Health also encompasses our society and environment. If our
land and people are ailing, as they were in the mythical story of Parsifal, and
indeed as they are in our world today, then it is going to be harder to be
healthy.
Moreover, health is the process of maintaining stability
when all about us is changing. This includes environmental challenges and the
abuse we inflict, often unknowingly, on ourselves. Stability does not mean
stasis, however. Rather, it is our ability to swing from yin to yang while pivoting
around an imaginary centre. Sometimes striving to maintain stability (known in
physiology as homoeostasis) requires our bodies or minds to endure
extra-functional activities, which we know as health crises, (and which the
biomedical model calls diseases or pathologies). Thus resistance to change is
an indispensable force keeping us in balance. But do take heart. A Chinese
proverb counsels us that ‘a crisis is an opportunity riding the dangerous
wind’. In other words, disease is a time for change. If we don’t change, then
our vital force makes the correction for us.3
Given that the word ‘health’ is etymologically entangled with the words ‘holy’ and ‘hallowed’, there is a suggestion that health is somehow linked with religion. We get more than a clear hint of this from investigating the origin of the word ‘religion’. And it has nothing to do with a church, synagogue or mosque; such places of worship are the original power bases of the Middle Eastern and European cultures. Instead, the word derives from the Latin words ‘re’, meaning ‘back’, and ‘ligio’, meaning ‘I tie’, or, 'I connect'. Thus the word ‘religion’ means to tie a person back to their source; to help a person become connected to life, the universe and everything. And through this, to become whole, or healthy.3
References:
1. World Health Organization, WHO Definition of Health.2. Thomas Parran, M.D. (1892-1968). American Journal of Public Health Nations Health, 1968, April; 58(4): 615-617.
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