What is health? This is one of the first questions we ask people that we meet in the office, or at one of our event. It seems simple enough. After all, we all were taught to consider our health and to be 'healthy' since we were kids. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself what that really means?
When I ask the question, the answer that I get more often than not is framed (more or less) this way: I'm healthy if I feel good, and if I look good. It seems simple enough - if I look good and I feel good... I'm probably healthy. Right? Wrong!
There is a problem with basing your health on how you look and how you feel! Fatal flaws in this logic can have serious consequences to your health. If health is only about what you see and feel, it seems to follow that things could very easily fall into your 'blind spot'!
First of all, if health is based on how you look and how you feel - then by definition, you are healthy until you look a certain way or feel a certain way. By contrast, if you don't look good or feel good - you would have to be unhealthy. Consider the implications, and the blindspots!. The number one killer in North America, is heart disease. The most common (by far) first symptom of heart disease is a major cardiac event, like a heart attack. This means a person may have looked good, and felt good up to the point of a life threatening event, before knowing something was wrong. Was it there the whole time (decades even)? Yes. For this type of person, that represents so many in our community, how they look and felt only mislead them on the state of their health!
Next, consider the common cold. When someone gets the common cold, they get some very common symptoms that might include a cough, sore throat, watery eyes, sneezing, body ache, joint pain, and more. To put it bluntly - they look terrible and feel terrible. Does that make them unhealthy? Well, considering that our bodies have been designed to express symptoms like those mentioned as it works to eliminate an infection... it's more accurate that this is the body being very healthy. It's our body getting rid of something, right? If you were to mask all of these symptoms with an OTC drug or medication, it may make you feel better. But does it get you healthier? Of course not. If you take a cough suppressant, and your body loses it's ability to expel the bacteria that has invaded your body - how on earth would that make you healthy just based on the fact you no longer have to deal with the uncomfortable cough? Insanity!
The truth is, that health is about so many different things. How you look, and how you feel - are not it. So when a patient trusts us with their health, we believe we need to address it. Of course we want you to look and feel your best! However, if there is something else going on... a 'root cause' (theres that buzz word!)... wouldn't you want to know about it? If you knew about it - wouldn't you want to do something about it? Or would you rather leave it in your blind spot?