It’s the most important question you can ever ask yourself if you consider health as top priority. If your response to it sounds something like: I’m healthy because I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I sleep well. I have energy all the time. I feel good.
I want to tell you right now: you’re wrong. Health is not just about how we feel. Real health is about how efficient our body performs its function.
After seeing over 10,000 patients, consulting with them on health and wellness as well as trying to help some of them recover from sickness and disease, we’ve seen how a lot of people tend to associate good health with how they feel.
It is the number one challenge that we have in healthcare today. We think we are well because of how we feel. Even more so for exercise-focused people who appear healthier and radiant than most due to the abundance of endorphins in their system. The question is: Is the absence of symptoms really congruent with the fact whether we are well or sick?
Think about it for a second. I can have cancer right now and talk to you with energy and feel great. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m well. Or I could’ve done a Detox and some kind of exercise session and feel sore and quite uncomfortable with myself. As with everybody who regularly sweats it out in the gym. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m sick.
So, if we can’t tell if we’re well or sick by how we feel, what do we do? We need to take control of our health and look under the hood. By that we mean get the right tools or get someone who has the right tools to run diagnostics in your body. Let them explain to you your current physical conditions. What to do about them and come up with a plan. Health is after all about how we function. If everything in your body is functioning at 100%, then you can’t be sick. If some parts are not at their optimum, then best you know now than later so that you can sort out a plan on how to improve them.
To help you visualize, let’s say person A goes to a cardiovascular specialist. And he wants to find out what condition his heart is in. Do you think the cardiovascular specialist would say: “Tell me there A, is your heart full of pain?”
What would the cardiovascular specialist do to explain what condition A’s heart is in? Not just to explain but even more so, to prove, show evidence and signs. Objectify the actual condition of A’s cardiovascular system. The specialist would need to run a whole bunch of tests. It’s standard procedure for medical practitioners regardless of expertise to run tests first to gain better understanding. They interpret the outcome of the data. Give you a graph on where you can improve. A roadmap on how to achieve your health goals. If there are no conditions found then they would usually give you a couple of preventative maintenance that you can start on to ensure your heart is always intact.
So, if we think we are healthy because we feel great, but we haven’t really measured anything then we’re just guessing. If we were to draw a chart start down from 0 (which means death) to 100 (which means as healthy as you’ll ever be), and run all the necessary test in between to find out exactly where you or your loved ones are on the health spectrum. You can then objectify the results, come up with a plan and make good decisions that are proven to literally benefit your health. It’s as simple. Eliminate the guesswork, find the answers through tests and achieve the byproduct of beautiful accumulative functions. Now this is what we call the real expression of good health and vitality.
