Health: The Ultimate Treasure

• A healthy person performs tasks efficiently, copes well in difficult situations, and adjusts well with peers and society.
• Activity 3.1 (lonely student): a student in a new school felt lonely, used his phone and social media more, felt worse, stopped making friends, had headaches, lost weight and slept poorly. A doctor advised less screen time and a counsellor. Lesson: habits and surroundings affect well-being; mental and social health are part of health.
• Our scientific heritage (Ayurveda): true health is a balance of body, mind and surroundings, kept by dinacharya (daily routine), ritucharya (seasonal routine) and fresh wholesome food suited to one's prakriti (body constitution), plus exercise, cleanliness, sleep, yoga, meditation and mindfulness.
• Health and happiness are closely related.

Health depends on lifestyle (how we live) and environment (our surroundings).

• Clean environment: a dirty, polluted place full of flies and mosquitoes makes people fall sick more often. Clean air and water are essential; air pollution from vehicles and factories causes coughing and asthma. The Air Quality Index (AQI) tells how clean the air is.
• Mental health: even with good food and a clean place we may not feel good if lonely or upset; talking, laughing and spending time with friends and family keep the mind healthy.

• Symptoms and signs show that something inside the body is not working as it should, and help doctors find the cause.

• NCDs (diabetes, heart disease, cancer) have become more common in India because of more processed food, less exercise and longer lives. Most deaths in India are now caused by NCDs.
• Diseases may be short-lived (acute) or chronic (lasting more than 3 months, needing regular care).

• General precautions: keep self and surroundings clean; wash hands with soap and water; cover mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing; wear a mask in crowds; do not share towels or handkerchiefs; keep home, food and water clean; stay home and rest when unwell to recover and avoid spreading disease.
• Parasites: organisms that live in or on another living being and feed on it (e.g. intestinal worms), spread through contaminated food, water, soil or contact with infected people or animals.
• Monsoon raises malaria and dengue cases because stagnant water lets mosquitoes breed.

• Diabetes: signs include frequent urination, excessive thirst, weight loss, tiredness and slow healing of wounds. India has one of the highest numbers of diabetics. It develops from a combination of hormonal imbalance, unhealthy eating, lack of physical activity, overweight or obesity, and other reasons.
• Obesity: manage with a balanced diet and regular exercise.
• Kamal Ranadive (1917–2001) studied links between hormones, certain viruses and cancer, and showed how tobacco, diet and pollution raise cancer risk.
• Therapy for NCDs manages symptoms and improves quality of life through medication, lifestyle changes and rehabilitation; early diagnosis and continuous care prevent complications.

• 'Prevention is better than cure.'
• Community sanitation (Bhadrak, Odisha): a community campaign led to more toilets being built and used, less open defecation, fewer cases of diarrhoea and infections: good sanitation greatly reduces spread of communicable diseases.
• Immunity: the natural ability of the body to fight diseases, carried out by the immune system. Some people fall sick more often than others in the same environment.
• Acquired immunity: protection developed after exposure to a pathogen or a vaccine.
• On meeting the same pathogen again, the immune response is stronger and faster because the body 'remembers' it from the first exposure.

• Our scientific heritage: India's traditional variolation used material from a smallpox sore to scratch the skin, causing a mild infection and building immunity; practitioners were called teekedaars.
• Vaccines are preventive, not curative: they protect before disease and do not treat someone already sick. They protect you and the people around you.
• India is one of the world's largest vaccine producers and supplied many countries during COVID-19. Maharaj Kishan Bhan (Secretary, Department of Biotechnology) helped develop the Rotavirus vaccine, which protects children from diarrhoea.

• Penicillin (1928, Alexander Fleming, London): while studying bacteria he noticed a mould on a discarded petri dish stopped bacteria from growing; the mould released a bacteria-killing substance. First antibiotic.
• Traditional medicine (Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani) uses herbs, oils and minerals and a healthy lifestyle and diet; useful for everyday well-being but may not work for all diseases and stages.