In dictionaries, and even at the World Health Organization, health is a noun. You might have health, lose health or regain your health. Health is an adjective, is healthy walk, healthy diet, healthy attitude. Health is also a fake adjective (for marketing): health clinic, and health centre, health insurance. Thus, health clinic actually means sickness clinic, and health centre might mean fitness centre or medical centre. Health insurance is just a fancy name for medical insurance. We also use health as an interjection, when delivering a toast “Health!” And of course health can also be an adverb, as in running and eating healthily.
When have you seen health as a verb? Many nouns and adjectives have become verbs, as Calvin enjoys explaining to Hobbes. Fish is a noun – and a verb. Google was a noun, now it’s a verb as well.
What about health?
What word says we are ‘improving our health’. We might health our diet, our bodies, minds, spirits, and our communities. Exercise and nutrition healths our bodies. Visualizing, imagining, understanding, meditating, and forgiving healths our minds, and our spirits. Healthy socializing healths our communities.
Today we don’t use health as a verb. Dictionaries don’t recognize health as a verb. Wordhippo lists verbs healthen (to make whole, healthy – as if health is an absolute, or stronger), and healthify (to make a recipe healthier) but not health. Why not?
A healthiness is an instance of health, just as an illness is an instance of ill. We have many illnesses throughout our lives. We have many healthinesses – as long as we are alive. We have many healthinesses of diet, of exercise, or rest, and more. However, we typically only have one, or a few illnesses at one time.
Health is a verb. Share on XTo health is to improve healthiness. We don’t have any other word for improving our healthiness. Most dictionaries don’t even contain the word healthiness as an entry. We have words for fighting and recovering from sickness: treat, cure, heal. But, when we are not ‘sick’, those become irrelevant. Healthing is not just the best preventative for illness. It is also the best cure, often the only cure. We can health our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our communities, and our environments to prevent and cure many diseases.
Sicken is a verb. But the antonyms for ‘sicken’ include sooth, cure, heal, make well, all of them verbs, but not ‘health‘. It’s time put health into the dictionary, as a verb.
Disease can range from minor to very severe, from unimportant – it will pass, to deadly – you will pass. We recognize that illness can be present as pre-disease, before it reaches the point of diagnosis as a disease. Only once it is severe enough, can it be diagnosed. As we treat disease, cure disease, heal the damage caused by a disease, we move up the scale, from red to green.
In the medical paradigm, once improvements rise past the point of diagnosis – the disease is gone – the word cured is rarely used. There might still be some minor symptoms, if you had a cold – your nose might still feel uncomfortable for a few days. If you had an infected appendix removed – you will still have a scar, and no more appendix.
Health improvements above the point of diagnosis are not medically important and not tracked.
Health is bigger than disease, bigger even than illness. Healthiness can continue to be improved when there is no illness, or after a disease is cured.
Disease is a judgement, not a fact. We can health our diets, our lives, our bodies, minds, spirits, and communities, when no disease is present, and also after a disease has been diagnosed. Healthing is a powerful curative, Health cures more diseases than any medicine. “There is no cure for the common cold” in conventional and alternative medical practices – but health cures the cold easily, slowly and steadily. Health is slow and steady, honest and true. – the Healthicine Creed. When we are healthier, we get fewer colds, and cure them faster. When we are less healthy, we get more colds, and they take longer to cure.
“Health” is the verb “to improve healthiness“.
When we combine these views, we see more.
We can health ourselves, and we can work to health others as well. Medicine focuses on disease. Healthicine is a wider view. For a comprehensive view, we need to study illness, disease, healthiness and unhealthiness. We need to understand the principles of healthicine.
We can learn to heal and to health.
We often speak of improving health to prevent disease. Don’t confuse the verb health with prevention. Sometimes prevention is healthing, sometimes not.
Holistic Preventatives: We can prevent illness by improving healthiness. Improving dietary health can prevent malnutrition, scurvy, and obesity. Improving exercise and rest healthiness prevents injuries from physical stresses.
Holistic preventatives add to healthiness to prevent disease. Holistic actions to prevent illness by healthing the person, improving their healthiness.
Reductionist Preventatives: We can prevent illness by reducing healthiness. Dieting to reduce weight reduces healthiness. Reducing exercise healthiness can prevent falls. We choose to wear a helmet, which adds weight and blocks vision, to prevent damage to the head, or a life jacket, which adds weight and decreases mobility – to prevent drowning. We might use drugs to lower our cholesterol and aspirin to thin our blood, in an attempt to prevent disease. These ‘preventatives decrease our healthiness.
Reductionist preventatives subtract from healthiness to prevent disease. Reductionist actions to prevent illness reduce the health of the person.
Healthing is improving healthiness, which adds to healthiness. Actions that reduce healthiness are not healthing even when they prevent disease. In most cases – reductionist actions are temporary, because healthiness is important and must be restored. Holistic healthy actions are important and often must be maintained for life. We must continue to eat food to prevent malnutrition – not just when the illness is present.
The Breadth and Depth of Healthing
The hierarchy of healthicine stretches from our genetics to diet, our cells, tissues, organs, organ systems to include our bodies, minds, spirits and our communities as illustrated in this diagram.
Health is a verb, important throughout the entire hierarchy of healthicine, important in every discipline of healthicine. We health our genetics, our diet, our cells, our tissues, our limbs and organs, our bodily systems – circulatory system, respiratory system, lymphatic system, our bodies, our minds, our spirits and our communities.
And our communities. That’s important. We recognize that communities, from families to associations, to companies and corporations, to churches, to governments at all levels, can be damaged or ill, and need to heal or to be healthed and cured. Even when they are ‘not sick’ – we can still work to health them.
“Courage, my friends; ’tis not too late to build a better world.”
– Tommy Douglas.
It’s never too late to health ourselves and our communities. We don’t need to be sick to health ourselves and others.
Health is also a verb, to improve healthiness. One hundred percent healthiness can never be attained, but health can always be improved.
Health is also the best medicine, the best cure. The books “The Elements of Cure” and “Cure” explore the concepts of curing in detail, and how cures come from healthiness.
to your health, for the health of it, tracy
author: Introduction to Healthicine: Theories of Health, Healthiness, Illness and Aging
This post was originally published in 2014 and this version is an update created in October 2020. In that time, the studies of healthicine have progressed significantly. You can view the original post here: Health is a Verb – original version.
