What is health?

At a class I have been asked the question, "What is health?".

Health is not being worried about the body mind complex and functioning happily without being aware of its presence. When the society starts worrying so much about disease that it does not think twice about injecting dozens of highly toxic shots as "preventives" into its young infants, then that society is sick beyond measure, beyond reason and perhaps beyond help.

Is it so difficult to prevent disease? It is not - provided one understands what disease is. Disease has very little to do with the ubiquitous bacteria and viruses. Disease is an imbalance that starts when man goes against the laws of nature. This imbalance lets loose a change in the physical sphere, taking the shape of pain and unease, sending out the signal that things are wrong. A disturbed human mind also results in a disturbed environment, thus completing the picture. The physician's duty is to alert the patient and lead him back to the state of balance. When the mind, emotions, the body, and environment fall in line once again to the basic laws, health is restored; true healing has taken place.

Except for modern medicine all the other methods of treatment recognize this basic truth. Modern medicine blatantly ignores this and adds to the imbalance by attacking symptoms (which are but the body's way to deal with the imbalance) and thereby forcing ailments that come to the surface to go deeper into the body and mind. Its highly toxic interventions also lead to toxic syndrome that the body finds very difficult to tackle. Chronic physical and mental illnesses, and organ changes result. These get accentuated with each passing generation through epigenetics. 

Do the modern medicos not realise this? They do. Modern research increasingly points towards the deviant mind being the root of ills that plague mankind. (Read, "Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body" by Jo Marchant) However modern medicine is not geared towards good health, it thrives on sickness. The pharma industry has to grow at the rate of 25% or more annually. This cannot be achieved unless there is a 40% rise in illness every year. To the doctor thus appears the dilemma, to heal or not to heal? It is very difficult to avoid the easy life that pharmaceutical incentives offer. It is very tough to take the right decision.

I can already hear the question coming. What about epidemics? I will ask a question in return, can you show me one epidemic that is not the result of some disturbance on a mass scale? The epidemics that have reared their heads in recent memory have come after wars, after large scale immigration that led to a disturbed psyche, squalid conditions, and malnourishment. Modern epidemics can be traced to poverty, unclean conditions, lack of nourishment, erroneous surgical procedures, injudicious interventions, and increasingly impacts of dreaded toxins that have become central to our lives.

Had these not been the prime cause, and bacteria and viruses been the sole reason for disease, mankind would have been wiped off the face of the earth. We have the body's own coping ability - the immune system being central to it - an ability that has to be improved upon and not derailed with "preventive shots". The environment must be cleansed to allow life to continue upon earth. Our attitudes towards the earth and fellow beings must change. Our respect for biodiversity must transcend our urge for toxic growth.

The patients too should now start inquiring, "Do I wish to be healed or should I go from bad to worse in the name of a false science?" The sooner this question arises the better. Besides protecting the earth, we also need to protect ourselves and regain our stature as the guardians of the earth, the children of the earth. Let us stop playing with dangerous toys and sick ideas of grandeur and go back to mother nature. The mother knows what is best for us, as Sri Ramakrishna has candidly confessed.