Post 1: How does one define a Disease?

It’s not a question that the world is still full of mysteries. Even as humans evolve from the Stone Age to the 21^st Century, there are still a lot more to uncover, ideas to formulate. Outside this sphere-shaped planet that’s full of life, there's still more to learn what is beyond our home.

As a student, I still got a lot to learn, things to experience, and to enjoy my youth and go through mistakes and errors. I’m not an expert, certainly not at this age, but I’m more than willing to push myself to the limits if it means that I can find answers to my questions, especially my thirst to know about a particular subject.

From a young age, diseases and medical conditions have always fascinated me, up until now. And even if I already took another path in life, this topic is still something very special to me, to the point that when I have nothing else to do, I’ll just search through the internet —specifically Wikipedia—and click on a random ailment whose name piqued my interest.

A disease is a complex subject, with a lot of terminologies, sub-categories, types, stages and scopes. The topic is limitless; for as the human population evolves with time, so does the dangers that affects out health.  Along with those are the questions that bother the minds that take on this particular matter.

What is the cause? What are the effects? How do we stop it, and how do we prevent it?

But before we dwell into those, let us first go back to the basic question: what is a disease?

“It’s a condition that affects our health.” You may say. But disease is not as simple as that. Even I defined it as such at first. As I searched through the internet about diseases, I came across an article by Jackie Leach Scully titled, appropriately enough, “What is a disease?”, an analysis of how does one define the term, how it is used interchangeably with 'disability', and if one should consider something as a disability if we look through someone's experience.

And as I read through the article, my definition of the term changed entirely, and up until now, I still ask myself, just how do you define a disease? As the author said, it’s not helpful to define it simply as the antonym of “health”. I mean, really?

“It might not be easy to articulate what a disease is, but we like to think we would at least all know when we saw one. Unfortunately, this is problematic as well. Notions of health are highly context-dependent, as human diseases only exist in relation to people, and people live in varied cultural contexts.”

The article itself opened my viewpoints and had me thinking through the night on how the term “disease” has evolved not only through history, but through different cultures as well. Disease and things that are abnormal to society is often molded into the same term that it sparks arguments on different sides. An example would be obesity.

In historical times, obesity was once a status symbol, something that is often regarded as a sign of wealth, fertility, and prestige, particularly in Medieval and Renaissance times where the upper class started to flaunt their robust figures. But nowadays, it’s mostly regarded as a disease that affects our health, and being slim is the newest trend. The keyword here is ‘mostly’; note that in some countries where food is scarce such as certain parts in Africa, being bigger than average is still a sign of wealth, and who are we to judge them?

And to make matters a bit more complicated, despite the fact that I do say that it is a sign of fertility in the olden days, not everyone thought so. The Greeks, who believed in moderation, were the first to categorize obesity as a disease, as well as the Christian European people, who had believed that food will lead to sins of Gluttony, Lust and Sloth.  And with modern society, there are those narrow-minded people who mistakenly use the term “obese” for people with a simply above-average weight and full appearance.

An painting portraying a man of wealth and status.

Like how Jackie Leach Scully pointed out how homosexuality is regarded as a disease before, it is now more of a preference, or a specific subculture. But even when the majority thinks of it like that, there will always be someone who will think otherwise.

To define disease depends on who you are talking to, from what culture, and what beliefs. It’s complex and confusing, but it’s something that provokes us to think, to find answers, and put in our two cents.