It's a little hard to talk about physical health, energetic (quantum) health, or inner (mental and emotional) health issues apart from one another, because really they're so intertwined. But I'll do my best to talk here about health as it relates to the physical body (as science recognizes that body).

In short, the physical body needs certain things to keep itself in good health. These include proper nutrition, activity, and environment, which break into the following six topics:

• Diet
• Water
• Rest
• Exercise
• Clean Air
• Warmth

In time, I'll have articles on each of the topics above, so you can click on them and learn more.

MALFUNCTION

Though I believe the physical body is driven by higher forces -- the energy body, the mind and emotions, and the soul if you believe in one -- the physical body itself is basically an organic machine, and therefore is capable of malfunction. A poor diet, lack of water, lack of sleep or exercise or clean air or warmth -- these cause our bodies to break down in various ways, and this is one form of illness.

DISEASE

Different from physical malfunction, disease is the presence of some distortion of the biofield. This can be the result of physical malfunction, but it can also be due to the imbalance of spiritual, mental, emotional, and energy (quantum) forces.

ILLNESS

In either case, illness is the symptom of some cause -- either poor regimen (diet, sleep, exercise, etc.) -- or disease. Very often, we address these symptoms with chemical drugs, which inhibit the body at a molecular level from responding as it normally would to malfunction or disease. We know, for instance, that this switch (an inflammation inhibitor, perhaps) turns off that light (perhaps joint pain); so we hit the switch and the illness appears to be gone.

ADDRESSING THE CAUSE

Of course chemical drugs fail to address the CAUSE of the problem. The illness was experienced because of malfunction or disease, and until we address the cause, that join pain is likely to return.

HOWEVER -- it is possible that, indirectly, the chemical drug can do you some good. In holistic circles, chemical drugs are very often immediately dismissed as bad news. But if a headache is caused by lack of sleep and is keeping you from getting any sleep, a chemical drug may alleviate the pain enough for you to finally get some sleep and address the cause of the illness.

In other words, chemical drugs often fail to address the cause of a problem directly, but they may do so indirectly. Having said that, they often come with side effects too, and one needs to determine whether the risk of those side effects is worth the benefit of the primary effect.

Whether or not chemical drugs are used, it's important to address the cause of illness (as with sleep for the headache in the example above) if you want to deal with it on a more permanent basis. I'll talk about dealing with disease in my articles on energetic and inner health. But where the cause is due to regimen, you merely need to determine where you've gone wrong and then adjust for it.

This is why many people, for instance, are able to address joint issues by supplementing their diets with glucosamine and chondroitin, which appear to have parts in joint cartilage and connective tissues. And why, if you're feeling very tired, you may simply need to get a good night's sleep!

Of course if you're tired because of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, feeling energetic again will probably involve more than just sleep. This is why determining true causes is so important. While this is sometimes easy for anyone to do for themselves, sometimes cases are more complex, and this is (ideally) why we have health care practitioners in the first place. Someone well-versed in how the body works may help you to see patterns or certain cause/effect relationships that are affecting your health.

SUMMARY

Maintenance of good, physical health, then, means getting all the nutrients you need into your body and used by your body, while avoiding foods that cause your body to malfunction; it means getting enough rest for bodily repair and enough exercise to get things working in the body; and it means supplying the body with an adequate environment in which to operate.

It also means understanding, as far as possible, the root cause of any illness, whether the cause is physical or not, and addressing that cause to eliminate the illness.