This is inherently different from the effort to promote health by simply avoiding sickness. In this context, one may view the lack of health at five levels:

Dissatisfaction

Discomfort

Disability

Overt disease

Death or dying (Rosch, n.d.).

While we would normally tend to view these as progressive and more severe stages of illness, they might be accorded equal weight on a holistic scale which measures total health. Another distinction that follows from the above is the difference between normal and average. Most of our recognition of disease is based upon an observation of an abnormal finding. There is little question that such a deviation suggests illness, but it is an error to assume automatically that a normal finding implies health. Normal values are generally determined from surveys of Americans presumed to be healthy. Many of them, however, are afflicted with hypertension, ulcers, arthritis, or obesity, or have habits that are...
[ View Full Essay]