What is Health and its Importance

Health, in humans, is the extent to which an individual has sustained physical, emotional, psychological, and social abilities to cope with the environment.

This definition is just one of many possible definitions. In particular, the composition of "good" health can vary greatly. A fairly vulnerable person who stays "good" in the ordinary environment in which he lives may die from a heart attack caused by a heavy shovel after a snowstorm; or sea-level residents may move to a new home in the mountains, where the air contains oxygen The amount is low, and he will experience shortness of breath and anemia until his red blood cell count adapts to the altitude.

Therefore, even according to this definition, the concept of good health must include a certain tolerance for environmental changes. Human health Poor health can be defined as the existence of the disease, and good health is defined as the absence of disease, especially no persistent disease because, for example, a person with sudden dizziness cannot think that he has lost his health due to such an accident.

In fact, there is a big difference in the field between health and disease. Just cite a few examples to illustrate this point:

(1) It is physiologically normal for a person to have high blood sugar 15 to 20 minutes after eating. However, if the sugar content still rises after two hours, this condition is abnormal and may be a sign of disease.

(2) A "healthy" person may be allergic to a specific substance, possibly in childhood. If the person is no longer exposed to the antigen that caused the allergy and all other factors remain normal, they will maintain this healthy state.

However, if the person is exposed to the allergen again, even after 20 or 30 years, they may suffer anything from a mild allergic reaction (simple rash) to severe anaphylactic shock, coma, and even death, depending on the situation. Condition.

Therefore, it can be seen that, unlike diseases that are generally identifiable, tangible, and fairly easy to define, health is somewhat vague and somewhat difficult to define the state. In addition, fitness and health are not synonymous. A seven-foot-tall basketball player may be in good physical condition (although outside the normal height range) but may or may not be healthy, depending on, for example, whether the individual is the victim of an attack.

The flu. There are more problems in establishing the definition of human health. A person may be physically strong, resistant to infection, able to cope with physical difficulties, and other characteristics of the physical environment. However, if their mental state (measured by behavior) is considered unhealthy, they are still considered unhealthy. Mental health itself can be defined in many ways. Some people say that if a person can function normally and has stable emotions and behaviors, then he is mentally healthy.

Others define it as the absence of a mental disorder. In confusion about the definition of health, it may be more useful to define health in terms that can measure and explain personal abilities, no matter good or bad. The individual is functioning normally at the time of measurement regarding the possibility of impending disease. These measurements can be found in the "reference value" tables printed in clinical medicine, diagnostics, and other such references. When a person undergoes a physical examination,

the examination may include many tests. Some of these tests are more descriptive than quantitative and can indicate the presence or absence of disease in an apparently healthy person. Such tests include electrocardiograms used to detect certain types of heart disease, electromyography for primary muscle diseases, liver and gallbladder function tests, and techniques to determine diseases or dysfunction of internal organs. Other tests give numerical results that can be interpreted by the examiner (or results that can be assigned numerical values, such as photometric color measurement).

These are physical and chemical tests, including blood, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid tests. Comparing the test result with the reference value, the doctor will receive clues about the patient's health, and if the value is abnormal, they will learn about ways to improve the patient's health. The main difficulty in interpreting the test results. This is biological variability. Almost without exception, the reference value of the variable is the mean or adjusted mean of a large group of measurements. For these values to be meaningful, they must be considered somewhere near the center point of the 95% range, the so-called normal range or reserved range, that is, the range limits from normal to upper and lower limits.

Therefore, areas below 2.5% of the lower limit and 2.5% above the upper limit of the 95% range are considered abnormal or possibly diseased areas. In some areas, the range is wide, up to 95%; for example, blood pressure can vary greatly throughout the day (for example, during exercise, fear, or anger) and stay within the normal range. The range of other values is so narrow that they are called physiological constants. For example, a person's body temperature rarely changes (when measured at the same anatomical site) by more than 1 degree (from waking to bedtime). It does not indicate infection or other diseases.