Monday, August 23, 2010

What are health and health mongering?

Define Health:

Health is enthusiasm to work and enthusiasm to be compassionate.

Absence of disease, to be a part of the definition of health, is unscientific, to say the least. All of us have millions of our body cells dying everyday to be replaced by new cells. In the process some cells might fail to die at the appointed time (apoptosis) and they mutate to become rogue cells. These are the beginning of a cancer. Most, if not all, of those rogue cells eventually die a natural death if one has a compassionate mind AND TAKES A HEALTHY DIET. RARELY ONE OF THE rogue cells COULD DEVELOP INTO CLINICAL CANCER AFTER A GAP, long or short. So if we can screen every one for the presence of rogue cells all of us will be patients. There will be no well person at all.Our curse today is the disease concept. Diagnosis is the biggest disease in the faulty organ based medicine. Human body is a bundle of jumping lepto-quarks and disease is only altered energy pattern that needs to set right.  The disease concept is outdated, to say the least (Am. J. Medicine 2004; 116: 179.)

To be healthy one must have a healthy mind filled with universal compassion. Discomfort in itself is not illness. Stephen Hawking has one of the worst diagnoses attached to him which should have killed him decades ago according to our textbooks. But he still has enthusiasm to work and to be compassionate and so is healthy. A criminal might have a strong body but he is not healthy as he has no compassion.

  The new definition of health, therefore, is the one given above.

What is health mongering?

There is an all round effort at disease mongering all over the world to make money from the gullible public! (*PLOSmedicine article by its editor Ray Moynihan. ** The book Disease Inventors by Professor Jorg Blech *** What doctors don't get to study in medical school book by Professor BM Hegde)

To counter that kind of an effort, I have started this new effort. I am a vendor of good health to do most good to most people most of the time through this effort. Health is one's birth right. Nature has endowed us with a robust immune system that will protect us against all illnesses under ideal circumstances. Since we do not live in an ideal environment we need to take special care to remain healthy. This site will eventually hope to inform the readers about those simple methods. Let me remind the readers that most complicated problems in the world have very simple solutions most of the time!
This word is my invention and needs patenting.

Health expectancy Vs Life expectancy:

Another misleading term in modern medical literature is the statistical term Life Expectancy which many people (even the most educated good people) think is synonymous with Life Span. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Human life span has been brought down by all our efforts to date what with our spoiling our air, water, food, hi-tech medical efforts etc. Life expectancy is the number of years a new born baby could expect to live on this planet. This number depends fully on the peri-natal fatalities which used to be prohibitively high when we became independent in 1947. Today, thanks to better living standards, hand washing while delivering babies, better nutrition and literacy and information, the perinatal mortality has fallen drastically. That pushes up the statistical term Life Expectancy very much. The modern hi-tech has very little, if any, role to play in that effort.

Health Expectancy is a new word (neologism) created by me to denote the number of years a new born healthy child could expect to live without the help of doctors, medicines and surgery. As of now it is the lowest in the USA (JAMA 2000; 284: 483-485) and highest in India!




With these explanations the future blogs will become easy to understand. Let me have as many comments as possible. It was Winston Churchill who once said that "He has right to criticise who has a heart to help"!

6 comments:

  1. Health mongering is a phenomenon practiced by pharma companies as they are driven by bottom line concerns and not health concerns. How else can one explain that North America that has 7% of worlds population consumes 52% of all prescription drugs. Are these developed countries that sick?

    As long as profit is the motive and not health this practice is here to stay
    only a well educated public and counter this with wallets and brain

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  2. IF ONE DROPS THE WORD P WHICH STAND FOR PROFITS WHA TIS LEFT FOR THE PATIENTS IS HARMACEUTICAL - a potentially very descriptive term for the pharma crowd.

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  3. Of course it goes without saying that the message in this article ought to be widely circulated.

    So much wisdom contained in such a small space!
    The country of my birth has gone down the path of Harmaceutical preoccupation, I call it the Pharmaceutical Republic Of Germany.It is not far behind America and many of the roots of this harm were grown and nurtured in Germany.

    The P must stand for profit.


    Let us not forget that World War II was largely enabled by the drug barons.
    BASF, Bayer......

    Hegel said that an idea becomes a material force only when the masses embrace it fully, yet we are battling the lethargy of comfort zones, the clever minds of the Moneychangers and man's gullible mindset.

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  4. Excellent Comments. I specially liked that word harmaceuticals. Adverse Drug reactions (ADRs) are the fourth leading cause of death in the US!

    Disease mongering is what the Pharmaceutical companies do and we have to counter that with health mongering.

    All that we need to do is to show the common man how easy it is to maintain health without any outside help by following some simple guidelines about living viz:Let me hasten to add that diseases are only accidents. Death is the ONLY certainty in life.

    * Tranquility of mind filled with universal compassion.
    * Eating in moderation foods that are not too much spoiled to suit our palate! Avoid preserved and junk foods, like poison.
    *Regular physical exertion: e.g. simple walking.
    *Trying to help others in distress to the extent possible.Hate no body.
    * Regular sleeping habits.
    * Avoiding alcohol and tobacco totally. Small amounts of alcohol (red wines) is good for health is a great myth.
    * Give some regular exercise to your mind as well, to keep Alzheimer's away. Use the mind or lose it.
    * Laugh a lot with others and NOT at others!

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  5. Dear Herbert,
    You have hit the nail on the head.
    Wisdom dwells in heads attentive to their own,
    while,
    knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts from others.!
    How true in your case? Your words of wisdom are echoing in my mind.

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  6. we are glad that Dr. Hegde is talking about the paradigm shift that is needed to lead a good life. I agree with whatever i have read.

    We believe Dr. Hegde. But, we will keep an open mind for what is coming next from him. We will look for any internal contradictions. The reason is that there are many people who say wonderful things, but later on turn out to be delusional. We have just come to know about him. It will take some time to know him. We will follow him for wisdom till we notice something wrong.

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