Hello. How are you today?

In most languages, we greet one another with these or similar words. We are inquiring about each others' health, feelings and relationships within the single greeting. We do it with the innate knowledge that all these aspects of ourselves are part of the whole. Our relationships, feelings and health interact. We are not one without the other.

Most of the clinical health sciences, especially Medicine and especially in Western Societies, attempt to look at health separately from feelings and relationships. Yet we know it is incorrect. We can learn a great deal about the individual factors in isolation but we must always be aware that they are part of a whole.

There are hardly any biological experiments that give completely predictable results. When people are involved, scientists always need to account for something that is called the "placebo effect". This is the result you might get just because the person knows that they are part of an experiment. Sometimes these factors are branded psychosomatic.

All this means is that there is much more to a person than their pure physicality. Living beings, whether plant or animal, are much more than just the sum of their parts. Life itself is constant dynamic interaction within a being, between beings and between beings and their total environment.

How are you today?

If you feel balanced and at peace within yourself, you are probably well. But short of measuring your cholesterol, your blood glucose and your blood pressure, here are a few self checks you can do.

In the Mirror: Quick Self Health Check
"Let me see your tongue" were words often used by my mother. And so I would poke out my tongue for reasons unknown to me at the time. She might equally well have said, let me look at your eyes, show me your fingernails, let me pinch your skin. All of these are ways of assessing health.

Tongues, nails, eyes, bowel motions, sinus, urine and skin
Tongues, nails, eyes, bowel motions, sinuses, urine and skin all give us a good idea of how well we really are. I'm not going to suggest deep analysis and self diagnosis. Various specialists could assist you with this. It's better not to do deep self-analysis. Rather, if you don't meet the "well criteria" consider that you need to make some radical changes to your lifestyle.

Tongues should be uniformly pink without dark red, white, yellow or blue patches. The tongue should neither be enlarged or shrivelled and it should be flexible, supple and move smoothly. There shouldn't be pimples or projections on the surface.

Nails should be strong, smooth, pale pink with white tips. There should be no ridges, white lines or spots or any other deviation to white or dark colours.

Eyes: The whites of the eyes should be white and without a yellow tinge. The iris (coloured part) should also be clear and bright-looking.

Bowel Motions: You should pass at least one but possibly two to three bowel motions per day. These should not have a strong odour and should float rather than sink in the toilet water.

Sinuses should be clear and certainly not blocked or painful. The most common cause of sinusitis is dehydration. Cure: drink more water.

Urine should be plentiful (passed every two to three hours) and straw coloured. Yellow and darker colours indicate dehydration. Cure: drink more water.

Skin should be smooth, slightly cool to touch and without blemishes. If you pinch the skin on your hand, it should immediately resume its shape. If it stays "pinched", you are dehydrated. If you have eruptions, cysts, pimples etc, your body is not managing its waste properly.

Water: Drinking plenty of clean water is the starting point for good health. I remember the huge change that occurred in my own health when I started drinking filtered water some years ago. These days I have reverse osmosis water at home and drink 2 or more litres each day.

"Hello, how are you" acknowledges our innate understanding that health involves body and mind

The mirror lets us know how we are as long as we appraise ourselves honestly

Tongues do more than talking

Nails are good health records

Eyes are thought of as the mirror of the soul

Bowel motions are critical to good health

Sinuses are filters

Urine is our blood cleanser

Skin is a clear indicator of good health

Start optimising your health  by drinking plenty of clear water