What Is Good Health? Here Are Some Key Points

What, exactly, does having good health mean?

This article, which I first wrote and published on another website back in 2008, takes a look at some definitions and important pointers.

What is good health? There are a few key points to note.

What is good health? I thought it would be useful just to use a short page on this website to define good health.

A definition of good health which can be easily found on the internet is “the state of being vigorous and free from bodily or mental disease”.

At the same time, the World Health Organization (WHO) constitution states that “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.

Zooming into the physical aspect of health, Wikipedia states that “physical fitness is good bodily health, and is the result of regular exercise, proper diet and nutrition, and proper rest for physical recovery”.

Wikipedia also mentions that “encompassing your emotional, social, and — most importantly — your mental well-being; All these aspects — emotional, physical, and social — must function together to achieve overall health”.

So, what is good health? I am not really interested in arriving at a specific definition of good health, or of health. Rather, I would like to fish out the key points. Looking at the various definitions and explanations, I note a few important ones.

• Health, or good health, clearly goes beyond merely the absence of pain, discomfort, disease or dis-ease, but also includes some form of wellbeing, strength and vitality.

• Health has more than one element — besides the physical aspect, there are also the emotional, mental and social aspects.

• Physical health is linked to lifestyle and dietary factors. There is nothing about medicine, doctors, hospitals and drugs which can make one healthy.

So, how do we achieve and attain good health? The key points above tell us to work towards a state of being free from disease and dis-ease, as well as of wellbeing and vitality; to do so using mainly lifestyle and dietary measures; while at the same time taking care of the non-physical elements of health i.e. social, mental and emotional. These points are coherent with our overall philosophy.