Are We Obsessed About Our Health?

• Author: KREYCHE, GERALD F.
• Position: Brief Article

"GESUNDHEIT," we say when someone sneezes. "To your health," we declare as we toast someone with a drink. The most common greeting is "How are you?" (The reply normally is "Good," to which a grammatical questioner would retort that he wasn't inquiring about the subject's moral condition." The old adage maintains that "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." Another timeworn saying has it that, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything; if you have your health, you have everything.

The Mayo Clinic and many other hospitals send medical bulletins to the public reminding readers of all that can go wrong with one's body. Many TV news programs feature short "doctor chat bites" explaining health problems in a few minutes of medical advice.

Most large grocery stores now have special offerings of organically grown food, and we are told to drink at least eight glasses of water a day. Health is certainly an important and legitimate concern for each of us, but have we made a fetish of it?

Today, there are "fitness centers" everywhere, some euphemistically called "wellness centers." Exercise machines have been sold by the hundreds of thousands to those who wish not only to tone their muscles, but want to look like a youthful Charles Atlas (for seniors with long memories) or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Many of those same treadmills, cycling machines, barbells, stretchers, and coasters soon languish in the closet or under the bed. It's hard to stick to a regimen of vigorous exercise.

In olden days, almost any kind of malaise was treated with ill-smelling and worse-tasting cod liver oil. There was no way to down that teaspoonful of slippery liquid without holding one's nose. What cod liver oil didn't cure, there was the belief that Carter's Little Liver Pills would. We are beyond those years, yet not doing things much differently to promote health. Garlic is very popular, despite playwright William Shakespeare's caustic remarks about the leek and the look the user gets when talking with friends. There is something to the complaint that, occasionally, the cure is worse than the disease.

At the pharmacy, one is sure to see arrays of vitamins and herbal supplements virtually guaranteeing to restore or better one's health. The shelves there possibly contain more products than prescription materials behind the pharmacy counter itself.

Saw palmetto, for instance, is touted by many users as a help for prostate troubles. Vitamin C in huge doses was pushed...