Ending the Confusion About Health

When I sat down to write this, the first thing I did was a Google search for the official definition of health. Here is what I found:

• Webster's Dictionary: The condition of being sound in mind, body, and spirit.

• The World Health Organization: Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

I was quite surprised by the elegance of these definitions and how much they resonated with me. The inclusion of mind, body, spirit, and social aspects, while also acknowledging the requirement to thrive, not just get by, is most striking to me. Optimizing, not surviving.

How I Define Health

My definition of health is difficult to boil down into a single sentence, but here goes: Health is the possession of intellectual and spiritual strength, alongside social literacy, that brings joy to life regardless of circumstance, while striving for optimal physical and physiological parameters that enable one to live in accordance with a lifestyle that brings joy.

That is to say, most importantly, if we want to be fundamentally healthy, we need to build in mental resilience. We will live through difficult circumstances, we will be injured, and we will get older and lose abilities. Only when we are willing and able to not only accept these circumstances, but embrace them, are we capable of achieving true health.

This resilience is built upon:

• A fundamental recognition that health is not entirely under our control (think the "partial control" pillar of William C. Irvine's Trichotomy of Control framework)

• A logical understanding that ups and downs are part of life.

• A spiritual practice or exploration that enables us to come to terms with (dare I say love; amor fati) the situation fate has brought us.

• A social network that provides the support we need when challenged up to and beyond our limit of tolerance.

  
  

Once you have explored the mental side of health, you can consider how your physical body feels and what it is capable of. But that consideration should be both subjective and objective.

If the goal is to enable one to live in accordance with a lifestyle that brings joy to life, then, by definition, our physical health is subjective. Some people enjoy running marathons, some enjoy lifting heavy things, and others enjoy a stroll in the park or playing video games and watching movies. Each choice requires radically different physical abilities.

Now, it is critical that I continue to return to the foundation. We all must acknowledge that we will not be able to do all the things we enjoy indefinitely. The goal of physical health is not to ward off decline and death forever; rather, it is to manage the manageable variables of health so that we can continue to do the things we love while we still can. Losing the ability to lift a personal record or run a certain pace because of old age is very different from losing that ability because one stopped training.

With that said, there are still clear objective measures of health to consider. If one knows their numbers for certain health tests—like blood pressure and cholesterol, for example (which I will explore in another post)—one can mitigate the risks of various diseases. Contracting these diseases can seriously test the fundamental intellectual and spiritual strength you have cultivated by robbing you of the ability to do the things that bring joy. Silent diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease smolder under the surface. This is why subjectively living a life full of joy and without limitation is not enough to label a person healthy.

Finding True Alignment

Another subtle, but no less important, point is that knowing what brings joy to life is often taken for granted. To be aware of the activities that truly and personally fill us with energy and bring vibrance to life is a gift. Many of us, including myself, do things that feel good, but those actions are primarily driven by a dopamine response, social constructs, or the satisfaction of living up to external expectations.

Far fewer of us live in alignment with our personal values and virtues, building a life around them. It is more likely that our circumstances dictate our values, turning life into a series of meeting someone else's expectations or disappointing them. This insidious creep then manifests in all facets of life—not surprisingly, health. "Health" suddenly means looking a certain way, doing certain things, or following a specific diet.

Not only is it categorically and scientifically incorrect to think there is a single picture of healthy habits, behaviors, and aesthetics, but it is destructive and exhausting to hold oneself to someone else's standards. There is no fulfillment. Achievements are colored with a sense of relief rather than accomplishment, leaving us feeling like we are gasping for air before the undertow pulls us back under.

We are constantly exposed to influencers and personalities claiming they have it all figured out, as if copying their moves is the path to better health. But the path to better health lies within. It is about getting to know the self and ignoring the noise:

• Can I love myself enough to find joy in every circumstance?

• Can I focus on what matters to me and block out the noise?

• Can I control the controllable and accept everything else?

  
  

Stoic philosophy and many other traditions emphasize that we must only concern ourselves with things we can control. Recognizing this difference is paramount for our health, but even more important is taking action on the things we can control before they become a problem. This is how we find health in a world that constantly changes its mind.

A Simple Formula for Health and Well-Being

If we boil everything discussed above down into a single image, the formula below is what you get.

At the top of the formula is the establishment of our personal philosophy of life. The two components of this philosophy are virtue and self-knowledge. Stoics have argued for centuries that our reasoned choice (and the virtue we build through it) is the only thing entirely under our control, and that everything we do serves it. A virtuous person is someone who always tries to do the right thing and live in accordance with nature. Wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance (moderation) are the four core virtues of Stoicism, and everything we do, including optimizing our health, serves them.

Self-knowledge is simply having a true understanding of ourselves; the things we enjoy, the things we don't, and the "why" behind them. Taken together, virtue and self-knowledge act as our North Star on the journey toward a better life.

Only after we have considered virtue and self-knowledge can we define what health means to us. As discussed above, you have the sole authority to decide which aspects of health are important to you.

Now that we have a baseline and an honest target, we can begin to pull the levers that influence health:

• Target specific components of physical fitness in service of your philosophy and definition of health.

• Measure and optimize biomarkers in accordance with that same framework.

  
  

We don't want to chase numbers just because they are labeled as "healthy." Achieving these goals, particularly those that rely on diet and exercise modifications, requires a significant amount of commitment and sacrifice. There will be struggles, and you will have to push yourself, but you must keep in mind that enduring the challenge directly serves your greater purpose.

Subsequent to this post, I will discuss the following topics in detail:

• Intellectual, Spiritual, and Social Health

• Identifying Joy

• Physical Fitness

• Biomarkers (objective and subjective)