Diseases vs. Health

Image by NVinacco via FlickrWatching tennis tournaments such as Wimbledon is always a joy to me, and mostly because of Roger Federer. However, I am not writing about tennis nor tennis stars in my health blog, instead, I am writing down my little thought about "disease" and health, triggered by my favorite tennis star.

It was said that Federer has a disease called "mononucleosis". Such a fancy/serious name(!) which I wish I could have and "proudly" present to those who question my health problems. But the fact is I do not have a name for my "problems" (if we don't count "chronic fatigue"). To many medical experts this means I have no problems after all.

Really, modern medicine found me in perfect shape, even though in many cases I could not stand up still for a few minutes, yet modern medicine can find problems such as "mononucleosis" (not sure how serious it is, but at least with a NAME) on persons like Roger Federer, who can play tennis for hours!

I am not saying that Federer doesn't have this disease, or this disease doesn't exist, what I am trying to say is that modern medicine seems to care only about "diseases", not "health". In other words, modern medicine can kill diseases, but not necessarily bring health to people.

I recently know a person, an elder Chinese guy who only eat one meal (dinner) a day, yet he is in great physical shape (he could act normal even without sleep for a whole night, or a couple of nights. he could go hiking 12 hours without any trouble). I was quite amazed and talked about this to a friend who is working professionally in medical field of diabetes. She was actually a little worried about this guy by saying: "well, don't be fooled by your eye. He might not have a good results if he took a blood check."

Then I had to think: I had "perfect" reports of blood checks almost everytime, but I am not nearly as healthy as this guy, who might not have a "beautiful" blood report like mine. So here comes my question: who should we trust: our body, or the report of blood check?

My answer is simple: of course we should trust our body. A perfect blood check report doesn't necessarily tell us how healthy we are, because (again) modern medicine is focused on "diseases" only, it doesn't care about "health". Of course, I am not trying to denounce modern medicine, but simply point out a fact which I firmly believe: there is a huge blind (even dangerous) spot on its conventional theory, experiment and practice.