What the (bleep) is “optimal” health?

I coach people to attain “optimal” health. It might help to have an idea of just what “optimal” means, because health is relative. There are approximately six billion correct answers to the question, “What is optimal health?”

If I asked “What is perfect health,” I would still get a variety of answers, but they might be more predictable. An Adonis, or a Venus, youthful and beautiful, capable of rising to any physical challenge, immortal, never aging, no body fat that isn’t supposed to be there, perfect hair, perfect teeth, never gets sick … in short, an unattainable and unrealistic ideal.

Well, we aren’t all Adonises or Venuses (are those the correct plurals?).

Every living person is a unique blend of genetics and environmental influences. Who were the parents, the grandparents and distant ancestors? What genetic traits did they pass down? Probably more important, where were they born, under what conditions, and if you believe in astrology, under what combination of stars and planets? What was their diet like as an infant? What is their diet now? What did they eat for lunch yesterday? What is the quality of air they are breathing?

Going beyond that, everyone looks different! Some of you may be tall, some short. Some may not have any legs at all, so tall and short aren’t even part of the equation. Some will be fat, some thin. Some may have a slight curvature of the spine, or a rheumatic heart, a club foot, or an overbite. Some will be bed-ridden and totally dependent on the good will of others to even stay alive. Whatever your circumstance is, you are unique. There is nobody quite like you, not even if you have an identical twin.

So what is “optimal” health? Optimal means quite simply that you are as healthy as you can be, given your current circumstances and your physical, psychological and spiritual heritage.

Health is a day to day journey. You can make that journey one where, every day, you get better and better, a little bit at a time, until you are as healthy as you can possibly be. Or you can be on a downward spiral where you have given up on self-improvement, and surrendered to the temptations of an unhealthy lifestyle.

Wherever you are on that journey, the journey to optimal health can begin right now. When you go to sleep tonight, you can be as healthy as you can possibly be, starting from where you are right now.  That, for you, is optimal … being as healthy as you can be under the current circumstances. And since the circumstances change from day to day, optimal health will always be a moving target.

One of the techniques a health coach uses is to help you set achievable goals and targets that are meaningful to you, then to help you keep the goal in mind while making small, easy baby steps every day in the direction of the bigger goal.

I like to think of Candide, the protagonist in Voltaire’s 18th Century novel. Candide went from living an ideal existence to a life of travail and disillusionment, but in the end, his optimism won out, and he concluded, “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”  In terms of optimal health, that means that you are on a continual path to being as healthy as you can possible be … whatever that means to you.