“Health is Wealth” Meaning
“Health is Wealth” is a cliche. A cliche is a phrase that can be used to describe a large subject. In the modern days, where people’s attention span is reducing alongside their mental capacities, cliches are being promoted as laws. They are also being used to justify one’s actions.
Health is an important dimension in life, and therefore a cliche that is neither a law nor a fact may at times mislead one towards false beliefs.
“Health is Wealth” may refer to any or many of the following meanings.
- You need no other wealth if you are healthy.
- No matter what wealth you have, if you don’t have good health, they mean nothing.
- The more healthy you get, the more wealth you make.
- You may lose your wealth, or will not be able to enjoy your wealth if you are not healthy.
Problem with Cliches
The problem with the cliches is that they can be interpreted in different ways by different people. People love to decode meaning and therefore cliches help them to fill the meaning based on their own experiences and understanding of life.
The objective of this post would be to:
- Explain what is health and what is wealth.
- What exactly it means to be healthy.
- What is wealth?
- Healthy and Wealthy People.
- Uncorrelated health and wealth.
And the final objective would be to convince you to learn a subject in deep rather than learning cliches and interpreting them at your own convenience.
What is Healthy and What is the meaning of “being healthy”
If you ask a top clinician “define health,” he/she wouldn’t be able to define what is health. And when you look into WHO’s definition, you know, they do not know what is health. A dictionary definition will leave you wondering rather than clarifying.
What is Life and Death?
“Life is a state of Near-Homeostasis of the electrochemical processes in a Bioorganism(single or multicell). Death is an absolute homeostasis of the electrochemical processes in a bioorganism.
- So, the difference between a living and a dead organism is that in living organism chemical processes have a 99.9% balance, and in death, 100% balance, or equilibrium.
- An illness is %of deviation of the cumulative electrochemical equilibrium from 99.9%(not from 100%). Health is the inverse of illness.
- In short, if you have 10 +ve ions and 9 -ve ions, you are healthy and alive. If you have 7 +ve and 3 -ve icons you are alive and ill, but if have 10 +ve and 10 -ve ions, you are dead(absolute equilibrium).
- Because the electrochemical processes depend not only upon your own
What is Good Health?
Good health is simply when a bioorganism’s electrochemical processes are in near-equilibrium(99.9%); death is when a biological entity’s electrochemical processes are at an absolute equilibrium(100%); an illness is when the electrochemical processes of a biological entity are out of equilibrium by a large percentage(say 80%), for the processes to never come to a near equilibrium state.
A living cell is a set of enclosed chained and repetitive chemical processes, isolated from the external world with a boundary, and which can exchange electric/thermal/chemical energy with the external part of the boundary.
So, health is simply you in near but not absolute equilibrium, and the equilibrium depends on the external world, as much as your inside.
So good health needs:
- A stable environment with a little bit of chaos.
- A good interaction
What is Wealth?
Wealth is cumulative capital that can benefit one’s better life and can be passed down to the generations.
Capitals:
- Intellectual capital(technology like metallurgy).
- Knowledge capital(theory such as philosophy).
- Social capital(social connections, network).
- Value Capital.
- Financial capital(net money).
- Emotional capital
- Family Capital
- Field capital(for example agricultural fields, mines)
- Genetic capital(quality of genes).
- Health Capital(current quality of life)
Wealth=Sum(Capital1…Capital10).
Examples of Healthy and Wealthy People
Diogenes(Greek Philosopher)(405 BCE), and Ramses II(Egyptian Pharao)(1303 BCE) both lived for 90 years, almost triple the average life of their time and place. Alexander(353 BCE) and Steve Jobs(1955) lived for 33 and 56 years.
Diogenes: Healthy, not wealthy, Knowledge Cap++
Ramses II: Healthy, Wealthy
Alexander: Wealthy, not Healthy
Steve Jobs: Wealthy not Healthy
Similarly
Tagore: Healthy, Wealthy
Mozart: Wealthy, not healthy
Ramanujan, Newton, Pier Curie: Neither Healthy, nor Wealthy, but ++knowledge capital
Okinawa (Japan) who lives for almost 100 years: Healthy, not Wealthy
Health and Wealth are intertwined but not Correlated
Health is one of the capitals of wealth, neither wealth nor a representation of wealth, the exact way wealth is not a representative or guarantor of health.
Without good health, you will not be able to cherish and benefit from your accumulated wealth, and the wealth can only be given to the next generation.
On the other hand, even if you are healthy, but do not have a lot of wealth, then you will find it hard to meet several ends and might carry a suppressed envy. Even with good health, if wealth capital is not accumulated, then you may end up struggling every day for basic needs which will prevent you from growing philosophically.
Components of Good Health
- Good physical health.
- Good positive energy.
- Good memories of the past.
- Good memory and remembering ability.
- Good cognition and ability to think about a situation rationally.
- Good Hormonal health and understanding of feelings.
- Ability to decode and reciprocate others’ emotions: Empathy.
- Understanding of Morality(Social rules).
- Good social health.
- Good emotional health.
- Good digestion and excretion.
- Good sleep and recovery.
- Good sexual life.
- A safe and positive environment.
- Good understanding of ecology and participation in ecological equilibrium.
- Self-esteem.
- Self-sufficiency.
- Understanding needs and wants.
- Good relationships.
- Family.
- Hobbies and creativity.
- Learning and growth.
- Philosophical health(good understanding of the meaning of life)
There are several other dimensions that are to be worked on in order to obtain a near-equilibrium of the mind-body-environment. And therefore “eat good food, sleep well, exercise” are all cliches when it comes to attaining good health.
Conclusion
Both health and wealth are different dimensions of life. Each of these dimensions further has several inner, intertwined dimensions. Each of the sub-dimensions further has metrics, some of which are common, some connected, and some independent. There can be no absolute definitions of a “wealthy” or “healthy” individual.
Therefore the only thing that is important is the answer to one simple question
“Is my health and wealth better than yesterday, and am I doing enough to make them better tomorrow?”
We already know from the definition and understanding of Life that life is all about a near equilibrium. So, if you are maintaining a near-equilibrium in your pursuit of getting healthy, and becoming wealthier, then that will make you feel healthy and wealthy both. Neither wealth will replace health, nor health will replace the need for the wealth.
