What Is Health? Key Signs of Health

What is health? While most medical sources are increasingly claiming that absence of health problems (or chronic and mental health problems) means health, obviously, this is not the case. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity", but it does not provide any tangible signs or criteria of health. The correct definition of mental and social health is nearly impossible since dozens of geniuses in science were considered crazy for revolutionary ideas that they tried to advance. It would be silly to say that these geniuses were mentally and socially unhealthy for people in the past, but became mentally and socially advanced some 1-2 centuries later. Instead, in order to find the answer to this "What is health" question let us focus on physical health.

What is physical health?

“All chronic pain, suffering and diseases are caused
from a lack of oxygen at the cell level."
Professor AC Guyton, MD, Textbook of Medical Physiology*

* World’s most widely used medical textbook of any kind
* World's best-selling physiology book

It is true that there hundreds of medical studies that confirmed Professor Guyton's statement. Cancer is caused by tissue hypoxia only. Angina pain is due to the same single factor. Progression of diabetes, asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis and HIV are all based on further reduction in body oxygenation. Therefore, it is sensible to suggest that there is a certain O2 content in the human body that guarantee the answer to this tough question: "What is health?" However, total amount of oxygen is very hard to measure exactly or using the devices.

In order to prove that, consider this PET scan that shows brain oxygenation for 2 situations: normal breathing and breathing about 2 times more than the medical norm. You can see that oxygen distribution is very complex. One need to take 100's of such PET scans, then integrate oxygen content in each cross section and finally add all cross sections together to get the result just for one human organ. Oxygen distribution is very complex, since some cells are located next to the capillaries, some other cells can be 2-3 cells away. Some body areas have very dense networks of capillaries, some less dense. In addition, there is a process called autoregulation that can change perfusion (blood flow) of certain organs up to 2 times or more.

However, there is a simper common sense solution to the problem "What is health?" There is a simple DIY body oxygen test that can correctly evaluate body oxygenation. Furthermore, experience of thousands of people suggests that depending on the results of this test, people make different or opposite choices in relation to physical exercise, diet, junk foods, coffee, sugar, and many other things.

Health is the state of the human body that is characterized by high levels of oxygen in body cells and the presence of certain specific determinants of health related to natural choices in relation physical exercise, diet, addictive substances and foods, sleep and some others. To find out more, go to determinants of health.

Physical health resources from NormalBreathing.com:
Body oxygen test - Measure your own breathing and body oxygenation with a simple DIY test
Body oxygen in healthy - These are results of 27 medical studies for the body oxygen test in healthy people
Body oxygen in sick - These 14 medical studies show the numbers for the body oxygen test in sick people
Breathing rate - Parameters, graph, and description of the normal breathing pattern and breathing rate
Hyperventilation syndrome - These 34 studies testify about nearly 100% prevalence of chronic hyperventilation in people with various chronic conditions
Minute ventilation Very easy and small breathing was found in healthy subjects as these 14 studies claim
Hyperventilation - It is present in about 90% of more of modern normal subjects, according to 24 medical publications