Facts About Health

The most common causes of death have been changed, mostly by better public health measures. Today, if you die before your natural life span it will most likely be from an illness caused by your lifestyle. Despite advances in public health, we are generally not very healthy and this appears to be getting worse amongst young people. Making healthy changes to your lifestyle can help you both to avoid premature death and to enjoy your life more fully.

`Your good health!' It's one of our most common toasts. If it does not always accompany the healthiest of drinks, that doesn't deny the fact that good health is something we often wish for each other and for ourselves. Later we will explain how you can enjoy some very good drinking, if that's to your taste, as a part of a healthy lifestyle. That's a point we would like to make early and will repeat often: living a healthy lifestyle does not mean going without all the things you like and putting up with things that no one in his right mind could ever like. It does mean enjoying the good things in life and coping with a few healthy demands in moderation.

In recent years there has been a growing interest in health and the factors that affect it. The clearest evidence of this is the massive growth of the 'health' industry, 'health food' shops, `health and fitness' center, 'health' magazines, 'health'-giving gadgets, potions, pills and books. If you'll forgive the pun, we think this interest is healthy because, as we will explain, you are the single most important influence over your health. Unfortunately, your interest may sometimes be attracted to a part of the 'health' industry that seems to offer a magical solution for good health. No need to make much change to how you live or what you eat or drink. Certainly no need for all that unpleasant and sweaty exercise. just swallow one of these vitamin pills a day or let our machine do the exercise for you or eat lots of oat bran. As you will learn, these magical solutions for good health are magical only in their capacity to earn money for their marketers.

For most of us, enjoying good health will involve making some moderate changes to several aspects of our lifestyles. Although they will cost a bit more effort from you than the magical solutions require, those changes need not cost you any more money than you already spend on daily living. Even if you rarely need to consult a doctor, you probably pay a compulsory 'health' Insurance levy to Medicare and may well pay an additional health insurance premium to a private 'health' fund.

With all of this interest, activity and expenditure, you might assume we would all know about and enjoy good health. The truth is sadly otherwise. It is true that fewer babies or children die and people live longer than they used to. Some diseases that often killed or crippled have largely disappeared. But many of these health gains are due more to improved public health measures such as sewerage, drains, clean water supplies and better food handling than to advances in medical science. The 'wonder drugs' of the 20th century have in fact been a mixed blessing. They certainly saved many lives, but that has sometimes prompted an over-use which has spawned the growing threat of drug-resistant strains of diseases. The widely reported advances in medical technology, such as transplants, artificial body parts and in-vitro fertilisation, are welcomed by their successful recipients but these are comparatively few and the costs are comparatively high.

Many people have misunderstood the promise of medical science to be: 'No matter what goes wrong with your body or why it went wrong  we will fix it for you although medical scientists would be the first to say they have never made such sweeping promises. They are, like most scientists, cautious in their public statements. But the way in which their activities are reported in the popular media when another 'breakthrough' is announced carries such a message. Medical scientists are usually enthusiastic about their work and understandably want to have it reported favorably, especially in times of dwindling financial support for research.

For all the gains in public health, we are not a very healthy lot. We may like to think of ourselves as a sun-bronzed, outdoorsy, sporty bunch, but the only truth in that stereotype is our high incidence of skin cancer from excessive exposure to the sun. Our most popular recreation is watching television; our most popular outdoor recreations would be eating and drinking (usually unwisely); and our usual involvement in sport is watching it.

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