I decided to write this post after hearing many people describing themselves as ‘healthy’ without even understanding what a ‘chronic patient’ is.
You see, as someone who, as a child, frequented the local family doctor and local pharmacy, I remembered this medical definition of a ‘chronic patient’ and went to check it out.
According to this page on the CDC website, Chronic diseases are defined broadly as conditions that last 1 year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living or both.
According to this definition, a ‘chronic patient’ is any patient with a type of disease that needs daily treatment over vast periods of time.
Now let us re-examine the world we live in.
We live in a world where mothers take medication like Cipralex on a daily basis just to cope with everyday life.
Every transplant patient on this planet is treated with medication daily.
Every heart condition is treated with daily medication (before and after a surgery if one is needed).
Diabetes is treated with daily medication.
In fact, it will be hard to find people who are not on any type of daily medication these days.
So how come when you ask these people about their health they describe themselves as ‘healthy’?
Well, I guess you could call it ‘The new normal’. If everybody’s on some daily medication, that is the new normal and these people can now be considered ‘healthy’.
Just like many other definitions, I find I need to redefine ‘health’ for my readers.
I would argue that a person who takes no daily medication at all could call himself ‘healthy’.
A person who takes 1-2 pills on a daily basis can be called ‘somewhat healthy’.
A person who takes more than 3 pills a day, can maybe just be called ‘medically challenged’.
I used to be that guy, this ‘medically challenged’ guy. The guy who kept popping pills and kept getting worse with time.
Then, one day, a nutritional change made me rethink everything I know about the modern healthcare system. For once I was really feeling healthy.
Now if you ask me if I’m healthy or not, I would probably not call myself a healthy person and I take no daily medication.
And by the way, talking about costs, according to the above CDC page, this ‘healthy living’ is costing the American healthcare system $4.1 trillion a year.
The question is why the entire pill popping population who enjoys the sugary and floury keeps telling themselves they are healthy instead of trying to change?
My answer to you is that this is THE NEW NORMAL!
Stay educated.
Aviram
