Friday 21 July 2017

-ve Health <--- 0 ---> +ve Health

Dear Reader,

"Health is Wealth", is an old saying that I often heard as a kid. When you get to my age, health is not just about wealth but even more than that. It becomes a necessity and takes priority over most other things like, catching up with friends, watching a movie, eating out, etc. Keeping good health is becoming increasingly important for not just those who are unhealthy (physically & mentally) but also for those who are healthy and look healthy. It is just so easy to go from a state of being healthy to a state of being unhealthy in today's world.

Keeping good health is a huge business. Gyms, personal trainers, customised exercise regimes, diet fads, lifestyle changes, pills and many more health related businesses catering to all kinds of unhealthiness exist today. I bet more people are stress out today about their health than about their wealth.

Fundamentally, if you eat right and exercise right, you ought to be physically healthy (but not necessarily look healthy). So, watch what you eat and watch how much physical exercise you get on a daily basis and you should be good. Supplement that with some specifics for you as an individual and you can go from good to great. Yoga is a great exercise regime for improving your physical health.

Mental health is harder to improve. Thankfully with the right advice this too can be improved greatly for individuals. What's important here is figuring out that you need to improve your mental health. Again techniques in Yoga will help in improving your mental health too.

Whatever method you use to get physically and mentally healthy it is a journey that one, as an individual, will have to make. It varies from individual to individual and depends on which stage of your life you are in.

But fundamentally, how does one measure one's healthiness. Most people talk about BMI ratios. But that just measures body fat. Is there an index that measures your healthiness. A health index perhaps that tells you how healthy you are.

Lets make it easier and split the healthiness index into a stamina index (physical, mental) and endurance index (again physical, mental). The medical field should come up with a universally acceptable methodology to accurately measure ones stamina index and endurance index, both physically and mentally. Such a methodology will have to factor in differences in age, gender, environment, etc. Eventually there will be 4 indices to tell you how healthy you are. This will also allow one to improve each index individually by performing focussed activities. Each index also does not have to be only +ve it can also be -ve suggesting how worst off you are compared to an average healthy person.

I bet those with +ve valued indices will be contributing more to society than those with -ve valued indices. What do you think?

Regards,
Jyothin



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