I am back after a little pause. I had to take care of some health issues that are not over yet, but in the way to be. My recent struggles with health got me thinking about what it means to think we are healthy and actually being healthy. I want to talk about 3 instances or traps that can erroneously make you think you are healthy or doing what you are suppose to do to lead a healthy life but don’t guarantee you will be healthy, as in not sick.

1. Services and products in the internet. The internet is flooded with products and services that assure you will make you healthy or if you buy them you will be healthy. We see them everyday: the diet, the supplement, the 3 weeks course on being healthy, etc. The problem is that even if you have the time to do everything, or  the money to buy the supplements and you actually take them regularly, there is no way you can be sure you will be healthy.
2. Be active. This is another message that is spreading fast on the internet and social channels. Be active x amount of minutes a day and your body will look amazing and you will be healthy. Well, you know what? it’s good to be active but again it doesn’t mean that you won’t get sick. They say it’s less probable, but what does that mean really?
3. Being happy. Finally, the one that I love the most is that happy people are healthy people. You know how many negative people I know that are healthy? people that torture everybody around them for years and the worse they get is a cold? Come on, maybe being happy helps with your overall feeling of being healthy and you are capable of enjoying moments that negative people can’t even see, but again it is not a guarantee for health either.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that we need to be realistic and understand that all the messages out there that tell us how to be happy, healthy, good-looking, attractive, etc., are maybe good advice -there is a lot of lies going around, beware- but are not a formula against decease or aging. We need to strive to live our lives true to ourselves and be happy and eat healthy and exercise as much as it is possible and good for us. There is no ‘one size fit all’ formula to happiness and perfect health. We have to find our own. And if we get sick, which can happen to anyone at any moment in their lives, we need to be prepared to take care of ourselves and ask for help to live through it and get well again. Also, getting sick is not the exception. Most people will get sick at some point in their lives. And it’s ok. We want to believe in a dream of healthy and happy and white smiles, that is sold to us in the digital world; but we have to understand that in the real world we need to make an effort to lead a healthy life, we have to decide each morning that happiness is possible and our smiles are yellowish and sometimes we have a piece of spinach leaf right in the middle of our two front teeth. And it is fine. Life is full of imperfections and denying them will not make us perfect, it makes us blind.