Healthy, As Long As I Feel Good

Monday night I gave a seminar for a wonderful group of people on “Staying Healthy through the Holidays.”  Opening the talk, I asked a simple question, “What do you think health is?”  The responses went a little like this: “If I’m not sick, I’m healthy,”    and “As long as I’m feeling good, I’m healthy.”

If you notice, they all had the same premise… If I don’t have a symptom, I must be healthy. Over my many years of practice, I have noticed that this basic thought is the model by which the majority of people gauge their health.   Most of us are judging our health totally on the basis of how we feel. .. Not how well we are functioning.

I feel this is one of the most relevant pieces of information that I will ever share with you… How you use it will determine if you continually distinguish emergencies or if you actively prevent adverse health events.

So, why should you do more than judge your health by how you’re feeling?

Being an avid St. Louis Cardinal fan, one particular name came to mind, Darryl Kile.  His baseball season began very similar to previous years.  Like all other major league athletes, Kile was placed under rigorous tests to make sure that he was “healthy” to play.  During spring training, Kile passed his annual physical, including routine blood tests and EKG.  But, the day he was to pitch against Chicago in 2002, he was found dead in his hotel room.

We’ve all heard stories like this one.  Someone, in presumably good health, died unexpectedly.  And, up unto that event, they felt good and had no outward signs that something negative was happening within their body.

I found a shocking statistic that 50% of young adults between the ages of 20-25 have signs of clogged arteries.  How many of those people do you think feel that happening?

My point… it pays dividends in years to take an active role in pursuing a greater state of health!