What is Health?
When I was pregnant with my son, I was so tired I could barely drag my body around. It was like my bones were made of lead. Testing revealed that I had several nutritional deficiencies, including iron-deficient anemia. The gynecologist prescribed supplements. Taking the supplements led to more problems, including constipation, and it didn’t resolve the fatigue. The discomforts of pregnancy, thirty-six hours of labor, and a week of little sleep as my son cried with colic through the night led to adrenal burnout. My hair began to fall out. I went to my primary care physician, who tested me and told me I had hypothyroidism. He prescribed daily thyroid hormone replacement, saying it wasn’t unusual for women, particularly older women, to develop hypothyroidism after they give birth. I took the pills and my health quickly went from bad to worse. Within a few days of starting the medication, I had a severe panic attack, heart palpitations, and vertigo that sent me to the emergency room. I was sent home with no advice. No one knew what was up.
Years later, I read the package insert on the drug I was prescribed. Its use is clearly contraindicated in the case of adrenal insufficiency. My doctor had not considered the health of my adrenal glands, let alone my digestion, nervous system, immune health, or any other causal factors. But, as I would eventually learn, all those organs and systems were dysregulated and contributing to my thyroid problems. Instead, he said my hypothyroidism was genetic and glibly predicted that my symptoms would worsen, that I would inevitably develop other chronic diseases, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
I was in my 30s and I had a child to take care of, so I decided to look for better answers.
Many people like me, who were not raised with Ayurveda, are turning to this ancient wisdom because we want health, while our allopathic medical system is focused entirely on treating symptoms of disease. It says a lot about the medical system in the United States that we spend over four trillion dollars a year on medical care, 80% of which spending is on chronic disease management, and we don’t even rank among the top 20 healthiest countries. To use the familiar metaphor about babies falling in the river, allopathic medicine is about pulling babies out of the river. Some health care research contributes information about building better flotation devices or fences, but it takes 17 years for research findings to trickle down to clinical practice.[1] I wanted to figure out how to take care of the babies so they were nowhere near the water unsupervised! In other words, I wanted a systems approach to maintaining health.
Enter Ayurveda.
Ayurveda focuses on many aspects of health and longevity, including the root causes of health. It is a science that has been “road tested” for many thousands of years, and more and more modern peer reviewed studies are confirming what billions of people the world over have been proving through their own lives: Ayurveda works.
Ayurvedic Definition of Health
Ayurveda means “life science,” where “life” is made up of mind, body, senses, and soul. Ayurveda is an imminently practical science that provides an observable definition of physical health. According to Ayurveda, a person may be called healthy (swastha) when:
the vital organizing forces (doshas) are in equilibrium, the digestive fire (agni) is balanced, the tissues (dhatus) and wastes (malas) are normal, and the sensory and motor organs and mind are in a pleasant state. – Sushruta Samhita
Ayurvedic wisdom makes it clear that being healthy isn’t a “one-and-done” achievement but the result of making better choices on a regular basis. It’s about developing better habits that help us live in harmony with the rest of Nature.
Food For THought:
What Is Health?
How do you define health?
What are your and your personal health goals?
Do your perceptions change when you focus on cultivating health rather than avoiding disease?
References:
[1] https://adc.bmj.com/content/99/4/307