Health in Your Own Hands

In response to the question of what I am most thankful for, I said I am most grateful to god for leaving me with great health. Maintaining good health and preventing illness is not an easy task and requires major responsibility. Health is with the individual when they take that first breath and with them when they take the last. In that sense, it is the individual's responsibility to maintain good health since they are with it all the time and it plays a crucial part in their well being.

Good health is a privilege that can be altered or taken away at any instant. Good health comes with responsibility. Responsibility requires time, knowledge, maturity, and determination. Responsibility is defined as the social force that binds you to your obligations and the courses of action demanded by that force (Princeton University, 2003). Moral questions arise when health and responsibility come together: How much does a person value his or her health? Do they have a desire to live? If the answer to both of these questions is no, then that person creates a greater risk in putting their health in jeopardy. If the answer is yes, then the individual must take advantage of the tools provided to them to sustain good health. The modern world has provided literature, internet sources, gyms, health food stores, and most importantly the men of wisdom; physicians.

One concept that is beyond the capacity for any person to understand is that the human body is just an encasement, or compartment for a phenomenon known as the soul. It's a driving force that recycles itself every time we make a conscious decision to direct an action. The body can be compared to a machine: it contains pumps, filters, electrical currents, receptors, tubes, and many other functions. It needs to be maintained just like a vehicle. And like all vehicles, they need to be taken to be checked up and given maintenance by a mechanic every few thousand miles, or as often as it breaks down. Our mechanic is our doctor. His job is to make sure that our fluid levels are correct, diagnose if necessary, and treat if science allows him to. The only thing that separates us from machines is that the engineering and mechanics of our bodies are not fully understood. This dilemma stirs up many questions on how a doctor can and should perform his work. Just like any mechanic, a sense of trust must be established. A patient must develop a relationship with a physician in order