For the average person, there are thousands of definitions of the word “health”. All of them I think boil down to a similar goal: Prevention or slowing of the onset of aging.
If we assume that the prime disadvantage of aging is damage to individual cells and systems which negatively affect the function of the body as a whole, then we reach a newly-derived goal: Maintenance of our current state.
Maintenance of health is hard. Harder than shooting for growth or preventing disease. It is hard because there are so many things that are happening at once to ensure the maintenance of the body’s current state. Unlike defeating malaria or stimulating muscle growth, pursuing “health” is unspecific.
Furthermore, if we expand our scope of health to encompass subjective areas such as emotional health, the ability for us to define a “state of health” in specific terms becomes very, very remote.
Therefore my message is simple:
- Objectively speaking, health ≈ prevention of aging
- Practically speaking, health should be defined by the constant pursuit of desirability of our condition.
- Accept the uncertainty, keep the end goal in mind, and keep questioning and testing.
Think about that when someone else makes a claim about a “healthiest” or “healthier” food, diet, or compound.
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Note: Aimed at the population at large.
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