How to Protect One's Health
Health-care (baojian) means protecting bodily health.
What is health?
The traditional view — that a person whose physiology is in good order, with no disease or symptom, is healthy — is one-sided and incorrect. The WHO has set forth: Health is not only the absence of bodily disease; it requires mental health, good social adaptation, and moral health. That is the complete standard.
So what is the gauge?
1. Strong resistance and immunity — not easily fallen ill.
2. With illness, quick recovery.
3. Open temperament, glad heart, ample energy, lively spirit, vital.
How to care for health?
In the 1950s–60s our country's health-care was relatively passive, doctor-centered. Today health has become an important indicator of social progress. Protecting health is a main facet of human awakening, a foundation of better life-quality. So views must change today: prevent disease — do not treat sickness, treat the not-yet-sick.
The WHO in 1978 proposed Health for all by the year 2000. That means: in the 21st century, worldwide, prevention-and-health-care will be the focus. The aim of medicine will not only be to treat disease but to prevent it and maintain mental-physical wellness.
Concrete measures
1. Personal hygiene, environmental hygiene, comfortable clothing.
2. Comprehensive, balanced diet — all the materials and energy the body needs.
The body is a living organism, always in metabolic exchange; cells continually renewed. The body's life-substances are continually used up; they must be continually replenished, or health cannot be held. Insufficient replenishment leads to weak constitution and many illnesses.
The Chinese ancients saw this early on. Li Dongyuan, author of the famed Treatise on the Spleen and Stomach, held that the spleen-and-stomach is most important in human physiology, advancing injury to spleen-stomach is the source of the hundred diseases. Many difficult cases he cured by working from strengthen spleen-stomach, aid digestion — and became famed.
The classics also note: the kidney is the pre-Heaven root; the spleen-stomach the post-Heaven root. The pre-Heaven is inherited from parents; the post-Heaven is nourished by spleen-stomach. A child born healthy with all functions normal inherited that from parents — pre-Heaven full. To grow up strong, the child needs comprehensive balanced feeding, supplied substance to generate qi-and-blood; with spleen-and-stomach's joint work, the various nutrients are digested and absorbed. Without enough nutrients to replace what the body uses, constitution worsens.
Some say life is good now and one eats well — nutrition is enough. But I can say with confidence: you are not eating all the nutrients you need; you may even eat your way into illness. Human nutrition must be comprehensive and balanced; deficiency is bad, excess also bad. Many "wealth diseases" — diabetes, obesity, hyperlipemia, hypertension — are tied to bad diet. Another misperception: that high-calorie food has high nutritional value. Not so; only comprehensive balance brings health.
3. Moderate exercise.
Exercise advances circulation, sharpens appetite, lifts metabolism, helps absorption and use of nutrients. Life is in motion: exercise brings health and longevity. So many people exercise in parks. But do not neglect nutrient supply. The saying: there is no water without source, no tree without root. Pure exercise without sufficient nutrition unbalances intake and output; over time, immune function falls and disease follows. Exercise must be moderate; too much also harms. We, in our 70s, came from the old society. In our youth Chinese mean lifespan was barely 40-plus, with the ugly name Sick Man of East Asia. In those years working people labored hard, the body was over-spent and undernourished; fatigue accumulated into illness and they died young. Of course many factors are at work in illness, but the decisive factor is internal — chiefly insufficient right qi. The classics: where evil gathers, qi must be vacuous; yin level, yang dense — essence-and-spirit ruled; spirit guarded within, illness has no door.
4. A calm and glad attitude — a chief mark of mental health.
Mental health slows aging and lifts immunity. Epidemiology has reported that cancer incidence ties to war: many countries had higher cancer incidence in wartime; in our country during the ten-year calamity many senior cadres died of cancer — tied to disturbance of mind. Cancer cells live in everyone; when the body is strong they sleep — one sees clinical cancer-bearing for many years. When immunity falls, cancer cells become active and invade. So in life, do not haggle, do not over-compare. Be content and joyful, find one's own pleasure.
5. Suitable rest and ample sleep. Sleep allows the body's self-regulation and recovery; it lifts immunity. Avoid over-tension; combine work and rest.
6. Regular medical examination — find early latent illness, treat early.
7. Drop bad habits: smoking, drinking.
8. Limit drug use.
All drugs hold three parts toxin; medication burdens the liver, especially sleeping pills. But elders all have some illness; as far as possible, shift from drug to non-drug treatment.