World Health Day was created in 1948 by the World Health Organization (WHO) because of the concern to keep people from all over the globe in a positive state of health. To this end, the entity chooses a topic to be debated across the planet on April 7 of each year, keeping it active throughout it, and the subject can be used as an agenda for other health-related commemorative dates.
Done, history explained. But even so, there are still doubts hanging over people about what it really is to be healthy. That’s why we decided to create this article and put an end to some taboos that surround our lives. First, it is necessary to know, in fact, what the word health means.
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What is Health?
Etymologically speaking, the word health comes from the term salus , which, in Latin, meant the main attribute of intact people. In common Portuguese language dictionaries, health means that our organism is in perfect condition. For WHO, health is the “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not just the absence of affections and illnesses”. In view of so many meanings and the advances in medicine in recent years, we can consider the WHO definition as the most sensible for today, since it was not defined by anyone, but by a council that makes up that organization.
Check out a list below that we have prepared for you with 7 recurring taboos in our society about whether or not someone is healthy.
1. Stop smoking x Get fat
Usually when a person has the desire to stop smoking, he ends up acquiring another addiction to replace the one he quit. There are people who brush their teeth when they feel like smoking and there are others who replace it with food. In the case of the latter, there is the fear of that old taboo that quitting smoking makes you fat, right? Wrong! What makes you fat is the food you get from quitting nicotine addiction. Therefore, always have fruit at your fingertips and drink plenty of water during the day.
2. Sugar vs. Cavities
Surely you have heard someone tell you that eating too much sweet tooth decay , especially if you are a sugar lover, right? For that is not quite the case. The formation of caries is more related to the way you eat these sweets than to the amount itself. Did not understand? We explain! According to Professor at the University of Medicine Dental Trufts, Carole Palmer, an acid that destroys tooth enamel is formed every time the sugar is taken to the mouth. That is, drinking a cup of sweetened coffee at once is less harmful than taking it in small doses all morning.
3. Food villains
Some people’s favorite foods, such as eggs, coffee and chocolate, became villains overnight. The egg because it gives cholesterol, coffee because it gives gastritis and chocolate because … it makes you fat. But, let’s think together, don’t nutritionists keep saying that we just need to learn to consume not only these, but any type of food? For example: it is proven that chocolate has properties that delay aging and regulate blood pressure. Of course, if you choose a type that contains a lot of sugar it will cause problems for your health. But, if consumed in the right way, there is no reason to deprive yourself of it.
4. Cholesterol
Cholesterol, nowadays, is rated as harmful to the body in a totally pejorative way, since there are two types of cholesterol: the good and the bad. Good cholesterol, from high density lipoproteins (HDL), collects unused cholesterol and returns it to the liver to be eliminated. Bad cholesterol, low density (LDL) cholesterol, on the other hand, is one that everyone fears, the famous “clogger” of veins and arteries. Of course, there is a need to take care of the quantity of each one, not to cause future problems in your health, but the idea that there is only bad cholesterol you can discard.
5. Antidepressants
Taking medicine, sometimes, is inevitable for the treatment of some disease. But antidepressants still suffer from a lot of prejudice in today’s society. Some say that they cause addiction, while others say that they damage your brain more and more. If you make continuous use of any such medication and are beginning to believe these myths, just stop. It is proven by experts that the lack of use of the drug when one has depression is more dangerous for the patient, since the risk of decreased neuron branching is greater.
6. Breastfeeding
Lactating mothers are always the target of suggestions of what to eat or not while breastfeeding your child. But it is important to note that the maternal diet can be influenced by several issues, such as economic, social and cultural. These influences can affect the consumption of foods rich in proteins and important for the sustenance of the lactating mother and, consequently, for the production of milk. Therefore, it is necessary to provide food education for mothers, so that they do not deprive themselves of foods that may prove to be essential for her and the baby.
7. Sedentary lifestyle
“Wow, as you are sedentary, you don’t do any kind of physical activity!”. Such phrases are increasingly recurrent in our lives, especially when the term physical activityis tied to sport or gymnastics. But, it is necessary to make it very clear that physical activity is not just that. For a person to become active, he or she needs to expend at least 300 calories per day. “But how, if I don’t have time?”, You must be asking yourself. Simple: day-to-day activities are already physical activities, as they are movements of the body that result in an energy expenditure. Look, walking your dog for 30 minutes uses 150 calories. Using a vacuum cleaner at home, also for 30 minutes, uses 175 calories. When you do this, you are automatically already using up energy. It is enough to know if your daily activities are enough to spend the necessary amount of calories.
“Beat Diabetes”
This was the theme chosen by the World Health Organization to commemorate World Health Day 2016. The main objective of the entity is to spread disease prevention throughout the planet and to strengthen surveillance towards people, so that they have that it is possible to treat diabetes effectively.
In this 2016 edition, the WHO aims to publish the first report on diabetes in the world, in order to have greater control over the surveillance, prevention and management of the disease, since it is estimated that it will be, among the causes death, 7 the largest by the year 2030.
So, did you understand what health is?
With all these topics above, it can be said that people’s health is directly linked to their well-being and common sense when consuming something. The psychological also weighs heavily in this scale, since, many times, a person consumes in excess something that will not do his body good, but, in his mind, he will do it. Therefore, on this very important date to be discussed, awareness is very valuable in any circumstance, whether it is time to end an addiction, whether it is time to eat or even when it is time to prevent some disease.
It’s for you? Does health mean what we explain here today or is it something different from everything we write? Tell us, all the added knowledge is valid!
