There should be no virtue attached to an individual’s approach to health. There are, of course, social virtues involving health – universal access to all levels of health care should be a building block of a healthy society. However, this cannot be extrapolated to the individual, by virtue of the fact that we cannot, as individuals, overcome all the barriers that are in our way to achieving optimal health.
Despite these barriers, there are many things that we can do to optimise our health. This is something that will look different for everyone. There is no universal “optimal health”, despite what all types of commercialised health care industries will tell us.
Everyone has different priorities in life and in health. Some people may consciously decide to de-prioritise their own health and well-being in favour of other priorities. Is this an ideal way to live? Perhaps not, but often society gives us little other choice. (While not the focus of this article, it should also be noted that even in this context however, there are still many things that can be done to optimise health within a framework of de-prioritisation of one’s health, it does not have to be all-or-nothing).
The priorities that may lead someone to deprioritise their own health may themselves be selfless or selfish and everyone will make their own judgement of this based on their own outlook. However the virtuousness of those priorities is an aside in the context of these considerations. What is being considered here is the virtue-laden approach to health prioritisation itself. Recognising and questioning the commercial interests that lie behind much health promotion is an important step in rejecting a virtue based approach to health.
Of course, life is not so simple as to say that everyone’s individual health is their own domain and that it is no-one else business. Health is life and the realities of our social interconnectedness means that our health decisions can and do affect those around us. But it is no different to any other responsibly made individual decision, which must be considered in a social context and boundaries and agreements negotiated with all those affected.
This is the main aspect being considered here – that the question of individual health, regardless of where it fits into one’s priorities, ought to be a deliberate prioritisation. It ought to be a conscious process of decision making and communication of needs and wishes.
There are conflicting pressures on us in regards to health. There are many pressures to deprioritise our own health. These pressures can come from work, from family responsibilities, from social and political commitments. There are also many barriers to prioritising health including financial barriers, lack of access to healthy foods and lack of access to and confusion about health information.
On the other hand, there is increasing pressure from commercial health and wellness industries to have boundless energy. Having energy to go about our day is of course a wonderful thing. However, the idea of energy with “no limits” is a carefully constructed myth. It is promoted as being the health ideal, which is not only a contradictory ideal in individual health terms (giving energy without boundaries or limits is not a health promoting approach to life). It is also an ideal that is most often promoted on the basis of self-centredness – which makes it also contradictory in regard to social health. How can we be individually healthy if our social health ideal is one based on self-centredness?
From a societal point of view, these dual pressures can be understood as two sides to the same coin. It is not only a money-making venture to sell us never-ending health fads. The boundless energy myth promoted by the wellness industry also serves an ideological purpose. A capitalist economic system will always want us to be boundless in our energy to work. They also want to promote the myth that we can “have it all”.
When we constantly “push it to the limit” and eventually come up against the realities of the objective limits of the human body, they want us to internalise the pain and mental anguish that this creates. They want us to hide our illnesses away and feel that it is somehow our own fault that we feel this way. They want us to turn against those who don’t fit the bill or who challenge the ideal in any way.
They want nothing to get in the way of their capitalist work ethic, which they extend into all aspects of our life. It is a virtue that has ideological underpinnings that suits the system – work hard, play hard, health hard – and if this doesn’t work for you, then it is you that is the problem.
With these conflicting and highly ideological pressures all around us, it makes sense that we must take a very deliberate and conscious approach to decisions about our health. If we don’t make our own decisions, those decisions will be made by default based on the ideologies of a social and economic system that sees us as entirely dispensable.
What does this mean in practice? It will mean very different things for different people – health decision making is as individual as each person’s health make up is. Perhaps the most important practical aspect is that this process takes a deliberate approach, it takes dedicated time to think it through and it takes mental and emotional energy to consider. For some, it may mean taking time out alone to think it through, for others it may mean talking through the aspects of health with those around them or with a supportive health practitioner.
Everyone will have their own questions and issues to consider in understanding where health fits in their life. The following are offered as a potential starting point for consideration.
Keep in mind that a proper consideration of many of these questions may for many people take much emotional energy. This is an exercise in deliberate allocation of mental and emotional energy toward understanding how you prioritise your health. So if it is an exercise that appeals to you, it is advisable to undertake it when not overly distracted, in the middle of a hundred other things or otherwise emotionally depleted.
- What does optimal health look like for you?
- Do you put time and energy into looking after your health when you feel well?
- Are there other aspects of your life that come before your own health?
- Do you make time and energy to regularly re-evaluate your health and where it fits into your priorities?
- Are there people in your life that you talk to about looking after your own health fits into your life and priorities?
- If you would like to put more energy into looking after your health what are the barriers that you feel are in the way of doing this?
- When you feel unwell, do you blame yourself in any way for feeling that way?
- Do you have people that you can discuss your health concerns with?