Talk:Health

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[edit] Comments

somatic re-diverts from this page to "body" without any explanation of what somatic means or how it relates to body. Am not up to defining somatic (I thought it had something to do with Soma in Brave new world). However if no one puts anything on somatic on the body page by next time I come through I'll take out the link  :o) --(talk to)BozMo 13:38, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Literally, the word 'somatic' means 'of or relating to the body' (see Merriam-Webster). However, biologists use it in several specialized concepts (i.e. somatic chromosome). Someone ought to do a search for all articles that include this word in their titles and make it a disambiguation page. I would do it, but I'm in the middle of a huge merge at the moment. --Smack 23:34, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The word somatic is derived from the Greek word soma, which translated in English means body. There is no distinction between human soma (body) or a celestial soma (body). Somatic should indeed be something relating to the body, even though the Greek somatiko means something of the body, so somatikos ponos is bodily pain.

[edit] Dubious information

I've cut the following bits out of the article, because IMHO they digress and are only tangentially related to the issue at hand. The bit about wealth is IMO wrong. You can be perfectly well while living in a tiny apartment or God-forsaken cabin with no more to your name than a few changes of clothes, a few dishes and a table. --Smack 23:51, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That is, not only must everything be all right at the moment, but there should be subjective understanding that the "healthful" balance will continue. This understanding comes from somatic perception, including pain and discomfort, as well as cognitive perception. In order to feel health, people need to feel that they look well, are functioning as well as they always have, and that no external or internal risk imminently endangers their healthful state.

Wellness, in this sense, is subjective, the perception of being healthy, rather than any investigatable "reality" of being healthy. The behaviors in the pursuit of wellness sometimes include proven methodologies, but may also include practices with no scientifically proven capacity to increase health.

Wellness is thought by most to be closely related to wealth, either because one must control resources to avoid stress, or because wealth itself cannot be enjoyed unless one is well, and therefore one can be potentially both in command of resources and suffering a sort of sensual or stressful poverty at one and the same time. It is sometimes observed that even rich people who take on too many commitments often have just as little free time as the poor - and may very easily outrun their resources.

Wellness has developed into a buzzword used by the Network Marketing and Multi-Level Marketing "communities" to sell unproven health supplements and quack cures.

[edit] Wellness

I'm unsure what the "wellness" content is doing here. Since we have Wellness (alternative medicine), and since we're not pushing any size limits, its eems like we should either move all the wellness to here or move it all to that article. The double listing seems silly and POV, particularly since health is a much more mainstreamed concept than wellness, and yet is not represented in the wellness article. Snowspinner 20:57, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I certainly do. That is why Wikipedia has disambiguation pages. There are several other articles with ... (alternative medicine) which have survived both merge and vfd notices. Wellness is primarily what science people would claim to be a quack term. From the point of view of the new article, there is a significant difference between both the approach, philosophy and content to this topic; just like there is a different in the topic of meditation between a religious and an alternative medicine approach. Any encyclopedia that has tons of articles on essentially trash topics like tampons can at least get the topic of wellness correct. Furthermore, the main talk page of the project on AM clearly documents my intent to write this article was on the record many months ago. -- John Gohde 16:05, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I'm not arguing against the content. It's just that, if this article is already going to document wellness with more or less the exact same content, there's no point in having the satellite article. Either wellness should be removed from this article and this article should link to the AM article, or the articles should be merged. Snowspinner 18:31, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)
Okay, if you insist. -- John Gohde 10:09, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] something

I erased all the "external links" in the main body that had absolutely no business being there. They were all references to current books, with no indication as to why they were there. I admit that the meta-information that "health" is practically a copyrighted concept, only useable under a doctor's prescription, is slightly informative, but there was no labelling that such was the intended communication. Health is such a profound concept throughout our lives and history that if anyone wants to read about it, we could recommend either the millions of books available at the nearest medical college, or the pop-hits at any nearby place that sells books. That's it, I'm done, thank you :-) (Please have your insurance info ready when you finish reading this paragraph, thank you.)

[edit] Removed misleading content

A deeper inquiry into the definition of "health" reveals that what makes a cell healthy is unique from what makes an organism healthy. Similarly, what makes an organism healthy is unique from what makes a population healthy. To illustrate this point, consider that Japan has the greatest life expectancy of any nation (2004 UN Human Development Report), despite having one of the highest smoking rates, especially among men (2004 UN Human Development Report).

Aside from the gobbledygook regarding cell vs. organism and organism vs. population (which appears to be uncited) I removed this content as it was very misleading. There are a number of cranks who promote the idea that tobacco increases longevity and often cite Japan as an example. In fact, the people in question--the Okinawans--rarely smoke, and live longer than mainlanders due to lifestyle. Tobacco use in this context is irrelevant. --Viriditas | Talk 09:26, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed external links

I removed a link to the website http://www.thehealthnews.org/ because it appears to consist solely of copyvio material reproduced, sometimes without attribution, from other sources. --Muchness 08:13, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

An anon editor keeps adding this link without explanation or addressing the concern raised above. If another editor feels it's appropriate for this article, feel free to add it back. --Muchness 14:54, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative medicine

I've removed the following: "However, with the lack of scientific proof through double blind testing, the placebo effect should be assumed to provide the health improvement in the case of successful alternative treatments until such testing can provide proof of any effects besides placebo. This is because as someone who feels well from their (possibly subconscious) belief in the therapies may lower their stress levels, resulting in beneficial effects on numerous factors, including blood pressure, gastrointestinal functioning, and immune response. The field of psychoneuroimmunology explores these links." It's POV to assert what should be assumed. -Medtopic 06:17, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pursuit of health

Where in Wikipedia does information on the human tendency to pursue health go? Might it fit here, in a new section of this article? Or elsewhere?

In reading some Aristotle today, I found an interesting quotation in Politics Book 1, Part IX, to wit: " ... in the art of medicine, there is no limit to the pursuit of health ..."

This seems to me to be profoundly relevant to one common characteristic of the developed world in the early 21st century. N2e 21:01, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

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