By Vaughn Gray,   updated 10/14/08

What is health? It seems like an obvious question, but if you scratch the surface, most people don’t really have an answer. Even if you go to medical school no one ever really teaches you anything about health. You learn a lot about various diseases, but health is never defined. Doctors used to think of health simply as the absence of disease, but clearly this isn’t a very good definition. It’s like defining day as the absence of night or life as the absence of death. These days most medical professionals are waking up to the fact that health is a lot more than just the absence of disease, but a good definition of health is still lacking.

Your body is made up of literally trillions of cells. Each of these cells (with a few exceptions) is filled with tens of thousands of genes. Your trillions of cells are organized into different types of tissues (skin, muscle, organ tissue), and these tissues are organized into different organs and organ systems (the heart and cardiovascular system, the liver and the digestive system etc…) All of these organs and systems are innervated and controlled by your nervous system, which is ultimately controlled by your brain.

Critically, every element of this unbelievably complex system has to function as an integrated whole. Your liver has to work with your stomach, pancreas, and intestines to digest your food. Your heart has to cooperate with your lungs to oxygenate your blood so that your cells can create energy. Glands like your thyroid gland create biochemicals that regulate the metabolism of nearly every cell in your body, and other glands, like your adrenal glands and pineal gland produce chemicals that tell your body and brain when to wake up and when to go to sleep. And this is only scratching the surface. Literally everything that we do, from eating, to studying, to going for a run, to having a conversation, to falling in love requires the coordination of trillions of different cells, hundreds of thousands of biomolecules, and a nearly infinite variety of electrical signals passed though nerves.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about all of this is the way that our conscious experience is somehow woven into the symphony. Genes, cells, biochemicals, and nerves somehow build a brain which gives rise to thoughts and emotions. At the same time, there is our perceiving consciousness which experiences these thoughts and emotions. This is what we think of as the human sprit - the awareness or consciousness that experiences the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions that make up life  (see A Science of Spirit for more). Whether our consciousness arises out of the wiring of our brains and the electrochmical symphony therein, or whether there truly is a soul or spirit seperate from the body is open to debate. But what is certain is that  the emotions and thoughts we experience consciously are partly dependent on the workings of our genes, organs, biochemicals and nerves. We know this because changes in brain and body chemistry (like the hormonal changes women experience around menstruation or pregnancy) can have powerful effects on our thoughts and emotions. But even more amazingly, the  thoughts and emotions we expereince can also alter our body and brain chemistry, our organ function, the workings of our cells, the way that our brain is wired, and even the workings of our genes.

Crazy as this might sound, it isn’t even really controversial.  Dwelling on depressing thoughts, for instance, will change your brain chemistry. These changes in brain chemistry in turn change the way your brain cells send signals to one another. Ultimately, these changes in signailing change the way that critical genes in your brain cells are turned on and off, and, over time, changes in gene activity change the actual wiring pattern of your brain. All of these changes ultimately affect the nerve signals that are sent into your body, and end up altering your body chemistry as well, ultimately affecting the organs, cells, and genes in your body.

Skeptical? Recent studies have documented that people can significantly alter the wiring of their brains in as little as two weeks just by thinking the right thoughts (the book "Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain" by Sharon Begley does a great job of covering the last 20 or so years of hardnosed basic sceince research into "neuroplasticity", or the sceince of how the brain changes). The idea that conscious choice to focus on certain thoughts can alter the physical brain (and through the brain, the chemistry and physiology of the body) was treated as lunacy in mainstream neurosceince circles for deacdes, but it is now widely accepted. This has touched off a major revolution in brain science. On a more everyday level, if thoughts couldn’t change chemistry, how else could excitement raise adrenalin and make your heart race, or nervousness make your palms sweat? Take a look at Emotions and the Body for more on how mind and body are connected.

It is flat out amazing that our bodies and minds manage to coordinate all of the different elements of our physical and non-physical being (genes, biochemicals, cells, organs, tissues, thoughts, emotions, and consciousness) into a functioning whole every moment of every day throughout the course of our lives. This is what we think health is – the proper coordination of all of the various elements that make up everything that is us: our mind, body, emotions, and spirit. Health is a symphony, in which all of our genes, cells, nerves, organs, organ systems, and our mind, emotions, and consciouness function together in harmony. The healthier we are, the better job our minds and bodies do of coordinating this symphony. Our health deteriorates when the coordination of all of the elements that make us up begins to break down.

So what causes us to lose the capacity to coordinate the symphony that is health and begin to break down into ill health? It’s pretty simple really – for the most part, our health starts to break down when we don’t live the way we are designed to live. As fabulous and intricate a system as a human being is, it’s a long way from fool proof. Our bodies were designed for a very specific environment. This was the environment that we lived in through most of human history prior to modern technology. In this environment, we had very different patterns of eating, moving, sleeping, and living than we have in the modern world today. Our bodies adapted to this environment, and the proper coordination of the symphony that is health thus depends on specific patterns of eating, moving, sleeping, and living.

As we abandon these patterns, our health suffers. From this perspective, inactivity and processed foods like doughnuts are only bad for us because throughout most of human history, we were active and ate only whole foods like meats, fruits, and nuts. As a result, our bodies came to depend on regular exercise and natural whole foods to stay healthy. In essence, our physical nature is highly adapted to the environment we lived in through most of our history as a species. And living in harmony with that phyical nature is necessary for  good physical health.

Of course, we have a mental, emotional, and spiritual nature as well. And the health of these spheres of our being are also dependent on our living a lifestyle that is in harmony with them. On the mental and emotional side of life, we need to do work that interests us and fulfils us, be in meaningful relationships, expose ourselves to new experiences, find ways of experiencing pleasure and having fun, and deal with negative thoughts and emotions and let them go. On the spiritual side, many different religious and non-religious practices work for many different people. We're big fans of focusing on being acutely present and aware of the world outside the screen of our own thinking (check out A Science of Spirit for more).

Achieving and maintaining good health today depends on establishing some healthy, natural patterns within the context of our modern lives. When we learn how to eat, exercise, sleep, and live in harmony with our biological design, our bodies have a much easier time coordinating the trillion-fold processes that define health. At the same time, we can come to understand and nourish the non-physical aspects of our being in the same way. This is what ReEvolution is all about.

The State of Health Today, and  Health Challenges and Solutions explore the current state of health in America.  Our Health and the Economy and Our Health and the Environment explore the far reaching impact of our national health trends.  The Pillars of Health, Health Facts and Fiction, Healthy Skin and a Radiant Appearance, and Emotions and the Body detail the major variables all of us need to pay attention to to become healthier. For more on our philosophy regarding health, check out What is ReEvolution