Holistic Health

Discussions on health in American culture constantly revert to fat rhetoric, as seen by the medical community's reliance on the BMI scale/chart. There is an inherent problem with the fight against obesity in America because it assumes that to be healthy you have to fit into a certain clothing size. Health in America is not actually about the well being of the person at all, but about the visibility of the persons body. It is ignorant to assume that health is always visible and measurable. Our understanding of health as seen through emphasis of addressing the material body are purely physical. Amy Farrell endorses health and wellbeing while she also claims to be a fat activist.

If health cannot be determined by the physical, fat, then what is health? Is health determined by who lives the longest? Yet, we do not know why some people live longer than others and often times it has nothing to do with the physical wellbeing of the person.

I recently read an article that addressed the health of Babushkas who still live in nuclear contaminated, Chernobyl. There is a group of women who choose to live together in their motherland, Chernobyl, in spite of every medical recommendation there is. "According to reports by the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Children’s Fund, many of those who were relocated after the accident now suffer from anxiety, depression and disrupted social networks, the traumas of displaced people everywhere. And these conditions seem to have health effects as real as those caused by radiation. “Paradoxically, the women who returned to their ancestral homes in the zone outlive those who left by a decade,” says Alexander Anisimov, a journalist who has spent his career studying the self-settler community. No health studies have been done, but anecdotal evidence suggests that most of the babushkas die of strokes rather than any obvious radiation-related illnesses, and they’ve dealt better with the psychological trauma. Toxic levels of strontium and cesium in the soil are real, but so are the tug of the ancestral home and the health benefits of determining one’s own destiny. East or West, pig fat or organic almond butter, few would deny that being happy helps you live longer." (Holly Morris) The Babushkas admit that they suffer from physical health conditions but overall they are happy and content with life. I use this as an example to show the importance of mental health as well as physical. The ways in which the "American fight against obesity" often get played out only address a limited version of health, typical for Western ideology.

The way health discussions are constructed through fat rhetoric can actually be more damaging to a persons health than the state of being fat. The fat shame Farrell refers to is seen in the form of anxiety, depression, and self image issues. This in turn is directly connected to physical health they cannot be separated. A persons health is not one dimensional therefore it cannot be compartmentalized to "psychology and psychiatry for the mind and medicine (diets etc.) for the body" (Synnott, 36). Going back to Synnott from the beginning of the semester, I agree believe a holistic approach needs to be used in addressing a persons health. It is also important to remember that what is healthy for me may not be healthy for someone else because of situational circumstances.

http://www.more.com/chernobyl-women-nuclear-holly-morris?page=5