I’m fine, thank you. Or at least I think I am. I have no major medical conditions, I’m a normal weight, and a recent knee scan showed that my joints are well lubricated. My blood pressure is normal, and I exercise regularly—at least, sometimes. I have a persistent cough, though. I don’t feel very strong. And because I’m almost 40, I really should get a mammogram, given the history of breast cancer in my family.
So, am I healthy? As my big birthday approached, I wondered more and more about this question – what is health and how can we best measure whether we are healthy or not. I had assumed there would be some well-established method to find the answer. But when I started investigating, I quickly discovered that this is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
Part of the reason is that we now know that many of the metrics we rely on, such as body mass index (BMI), are flawed. But it’s also the result of new insights into things like the microbiome and the immune system. These new insights have given rise to a whole new range of tests that promise to better measure health—from those that probe our gut bacteria or metabolites to those that provide an “immunity grade.” So which of these new tests should I turn to for the ultimate health check?
What does healthy mean?
Your common sense definition of health is probably roughly in line with the following…
