How Do We Define Health, Well Being and Chronic Illness?

If you were to walk up to a person on the street and ask him what he believed the difference was between illness and health, chances are that you would likely receive a fast reply about how health is when the body works correctly and illness is when it does not.

When one starts to live with daily symptoms that resemble a chronic condition, however, the necessity of needing to understand the difference between a healthy body and a chronically ill body becomes much more important. It comes as a surprise to many people who are diagnosed with illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, that many diseases are still surrounded with great mystery, even from the medical community. Long-term symptoms are not fully known.

This does not negate the need, however, for one to seek answers. When the definitions of health and illness significantly impact your life, it obviously becomes a more personal issue. And the validation to have your pain recognized by both friends, as well as medical professionals, can become quite important. One needs someone to listen and diagnose symptoms of his or her illness.

The task of defining what a chronic illness is does not seem like it would be a difficult one, even though there are thousands of types of chronic illness. For example, health is when you feel good; illness is the lack of health or what some may consider, a chronic pain that does not go away. But we must also take into consideration the people who seem to be physically fit who one day have a heart attack or stroke in the midst of their regular exercise routine or daily activities.

So if one's appearance or feeling doesn't lead to an accurate measurement of health or illness how do we accurately measure or define what real health and illness is?

The question may even be asked, "Can one be a healthy, chronically ill person?"

According to Derek Yach, who presented on the topic of "Health and Illness: The Definition of the World Health Organization," both societies and individuals have a variety of definitions of what is regarded as health. These definitions have all undergone scrutiny and criticisms.

How can a country determine health for their own country? Do we compare out life expectancy or infant mortality rates with other countries to determine if we are a healthier culture? What does it say about the USA that, as children in some countries are barely surviving on limited food, groups are pressuring McDonald's to remove toys from Happy Meals? While a McDonalds calorie list is a good idea, not every mother is searching for the latest McDonalds Happy Meal toy schedule online.

Are we setting unrealistic expectations on people to believe that everyone can obtain some level of "health"? Defining health and illness will always be a vague science because it is often the sociological definition and each country will have difference measurements to determine their level of health and illness, oftentimes emphasizing health (or illness) with certain intentions for international purposes.

And so this brings us once again to the question of "What is a chronic illness?"

Medically speaking, a "chronic" condition can be defined as any medical state of pain or symptoms that last 3 months or longer. This definition is provided by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. Chronic conditions typically have symptoms or pain that persists, regardless of treatment, such as the autoimmune illness chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, lyme disease, Alzheimer's disease, migraines, or back pain from an event like a car accident.

The majority of people in the U.S.A usually seem to be--if not completely healthy--at least free from illness or disease. But appearance is far from what it seems, because nearly 1 in 2 American live with a kind of chronic pain, condition, or illness. This can include anything from chronic migraines to disabling back pain. This illness statistic can be found in the study, "Chronic Care in America: A 21st Century Challenge" by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Our culture has given us the belief that we do not need to live with any kind of pain or uncomfortable symptoms because a medication can cure them. The popular advertisements of medications may leave us rolling our eyes or even laughing at the long list of possible side effects, but we still hold to the belief that the medication will work to remove the pain. If we follow instructions to the dot, we will soon be back to life as it was before our illness existed, feeling the same as we once felt.

It is often assumed that the concept of pain management means, not "managing the pain," but rather ending it completely for an indefinite amount of time. If the pain is not entirely removed from our lives, most people assume that the treatments or medications have failed to do the job they were supposed to do. The pharmaceutical companies that design the medications give us the impression that they will cure us from the illness, or at least remove all the symptoms.

The World Health Organization (WHO) was established in the year 1948 and at that time the word health was given the definition as "being a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." According to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, it defines the word illness as "a state of poor health." In fact, this source states that "Illness is sometimes considered a synonym for disease."

Many people would claim that true health is more about having a peaceful state of mind; an attitude about life that includes joy. They would say that health is not defined what your lab test results may expose about your body and its ability to function.

This can be a sensitive issue. There are healthy people who live with extreme chronic illnesses, but they stay as fit as possible in spite of their conditions. Other people may have wonderful genetics and be very healthy according to lab tests, and yet they put their body under great physical stress. And then if they get an illness, was it caused by the stress or was it an illness they likely would have gotten eventually anyway?

This starts to get into the area of the definition of social health, trying to understand which comes first, the stress or the illness? There are a variety of social factors that determine health.

In conclusion, many of the definitions on any topic in our society are determined by who you ask. For each person you ask, you will likely receive a different answer. Chronic illness does carry a great deal of burdens and frustrations, but it is true that joy is also a choice that can be made. I feel that I am able to say this because I have lived with degenerative rheumatoid arthritis for nearly twenty years. And I have learned that although my body may spin out of control sometimes with a flare have moments of being disabled, I still have a choice each day to try to find joy despite my circumstances.

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