The Meaning of Health

PURPOSE: To consider an integrated, holistic Western and non­Western approach to health. METHODS: Western and indigenous Asian and Pacific Islander concepts of health and illness are reviewed and compared. FINDINGS: Westerners separate three main classes or factors as the determinants of health: genetic, lifestyle, and environmental. Specific disease­causing factors are the basis for specific therapy directed to identified causal factors after a disease becomes manifest and diagnosed. Indigenous non­Westerners, such as Asians and Pacific Islanders, however, tend to view humankind as belonging to a timeless cosmos. Misfortune, such as illness, results from the loss of balance between complementary opposites. Effective therapy requires restoring proper relationships. MAJOR CONCLUSIONS: Modern Asian and Pacific Islanders might consider returning to their own traditional cultures for clues to providing integrated complementary, holistic, and thus, more effective, approaches to health and illness and life and death as an endless continuum.