U6.collaborative+essay

__Consider the view that the key to good health is not medicine, but lifestyle.__

Good health is what a person must earn through self-disclipine, and a sense of love and care for the body by sticking to certain activities, such as healthy diets, not smoking and exercising. These are all preventative measures to avoid the deterioration of the body and thus, achieve an optimum level of health. However, we are not immortal and there is always the probabilty of us falling sick or getting injured. Medicine merely serves as a cure to alleviate the negative outcomes of diseases. For example, a bypass surgery can unclog the artery of an obese woman, a tetanus shot can be given to the construction worker who stepped on a rusty nail to avoid poisoning and antibiotics can relieve a child's high fever. Despite these miraculous and impressive achievements of medicine, there is no surgery you can go through, no pill you can eat or no injection you can take that can make yourself healthy.

In my opinion, prevention is still better then cure. Therefore, I am for lifestyle. Now, what is the meaning of health? According to 'The WHO' (World Health Organisation ~ not the band), health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. But, Sara is implying that getting medical attention is merely curing the disease and it does not make the individual any healthier. Then what does? Isn't being cured considered healthy? Nowadays, we are more concerned with living a long and healthy life rather than just living longer. Many studies have examined the effects of lifestyle on the risk of disease. For example, in a study conducted by California University Researchers, it appears that sexual abused or assaulted growing adolescents around 13 to 16 are usually associated with increased risk of breast cancer, arthritis and thyroid diseases. It varied by gender, where arthritis and breast cancer occur in women and increased risk of thyroid disease occur in men. There is an association between early sexual abuse and a reduced risk of hypertension. The effects are not only due to sexual abuse but also related to stress-related hormonal alterations. Therefore, providing a conducive environmental lifestyle is healthy.

PS; smoking is bad for your health, eventhough scientific researches had proven that smoking could be a helping hand in curing Parkinson's disease but, it's still bad, lead a healthy life. Be a man. Do the right thing! ~your turn Felix.

Albeit how good one's lifestyle may be, it is only reducing, not eliminating, the chances of the person getting ill. Although prevention is better than cure, how much prevention can we maintain throughout our life, especially after the age of fifty, when our immunity system shall increasingly fail us? In fact, we were, and still would have been, prone to various diseases had we not received vaccination. There is no surgery you can go through, no pill you can eat or no injection you can take that can make yourself healthy. They can only help, likewise with lifestyle. However, for majority, to sustain good health with the latter method is nearly impossible. To hope for an enviromental-friendly lifestyle would be extremely naive and complacent. The world is now more exposed to more diseases than at any time in history. Therefore, the view that the key to good health is not medicine, but lifestyle, is false in my point of view.

Felix, I think you lack of points for your final decision, and why is ‘environmental-friendly lifestyle’ extremely naïve and complacent? PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE MAKING THINGS DIFFICULT TO CHANGE, **MA!** (-_-..kidding..**50%**) Anyway, honestly..**I forgot** what I was supposed to do..whether to attack Felix or all of you, or agree with all of you, and my phone is somehow **out of its mind**..it is both physically and mentally **ILL** (needs to change its lifestyle!). **Sorry**..T_T..I am very sorry you all, and Mr. Suresh~! Anyway, so, I will just say what I want to say! **HAHA!** (sorry, Shawn and Tai Yang..I **trust ** you both…=_=;)
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Like Imran has pointed out, Sarah’s view points are totally focused on only physical health, which I would like to dispute; mental health is extremely crucial and influential to our physical health. For example, that social isolation and loneliness impair our immune systems has been proved through a study of 2005, done by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. They studied the freshmen under immense isolation and loneliness, who seemed to have weaker immune response to the influenza shot compared to other students. Furthermore, conducted at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Evidenced-Based Practice Centre, it has been found that one out of five hospitalised patients for heart attack had experienced serious depression. Some cardiologists involved in the study stated that depressed people are fifty percent more likely to die out of heart attack than other heart attack patients. These medical studies are highlighting how mental health care is important for physical health. Thus, I dispute Sarah’s perspectives.

I am convinced by Imran’s examples, yet it could have been better if he had further explained them, especially the smoking preventing Parkinsons. Additionally, more formal language could have improved his speech as well. Felix, I like your start, but as I have pointed out previously, I am not convinced by your speech as you seem to lack of supportive points for your opinion. Moreover, how do you know that prevention is always better than the cure? A few years ago, a housewife, who had been totally focused on healthy lifestyle died from lung cancer, when she did not even smoke; it was due to steam from her kitchen. This, as one of evidence, proves that accepted preventative measures sometimes does not work. Additionally, you have stated that environmental-friendly lifestyle is naïve and complacent. I do not see why you have mentioned ‘environmental-friendly’, when what matters in this debate is our healthy lifestyle, not of environment. No matter what, your choice of diction here, ‘naïve’, is inappropriate, especially when you have no backing-up points. To add on, being environmental-friendly is one of the things we need to do today, even for the sake of our health – pollution.

To begin with my personal views, I disagree with the statement as it is too definite. It is true to a certain extent, yet the way it is phrased is inappropriate as ‘good health’ itself is subjective, and both medicine and lifestyle can or cannot be the keys to ‘good health’. Health, to me, includes both mental and physical health, and ‘good’ means stable and satisfying to individuals. Having healthy lifestyles, such as not being alcoholic, drug-addict, a heavy smoker, and obese, keep us fit in general. Yet, they do not guarantee our health as, for instance, some people have genetic health problems. Medicine, which has diverse types and effects, are mostly for healing unwanted symptoms of our body, such as flu, and they often fulfill what we lack of, such as vitamins. Many of you have stated above that medicine is just to cure, therefore is not a key to good health. However, then without good medicines, would you be able to sustain your health, and cure diseases which would definitely decline your immune systems and even your life spans? Would cancer be cured without medicine, just by your healthy life style? There is no guarantee that healthy lifestyle prevents cancer or other diseases because I have seen various people who were absolutely well-being got incurable or fatal diseases such as cancer. Those who survived have depended on medicines to a certain point. **Hence, I disagree with the statement above** that key to the good health is lifestyle, not medicine, as we need both.

//I am done!!! MOJO JOJO~power!!! >_ ~Shawn~ Ms Mighty Chung, I think you were supposed to be for lifestyle and against medication. The concluding statement is Tai Yang's role.

It is true preventing is better than cure, but a healthy lifestyle can prevent all sorts of diseases and illness is false. Like what Sarah has said, a good lifestyle is a preventative measure to avoid the human defense system to deteriorate and keeping the immune system to a certain degree of what people consider healthy. However, with the ever increasing of pollution it is inevitable that the our body can fight of new viruses and deadly diseases. In this case, without medicine there would be no life. Keeping a good diet and maintaining only healthy activities would only get you so far. As Jessica has mentioned, there are case sof people who have lived healthily but still die of various types of cancer and heart attacks. There are just somethings that we humans cannot avoid, either due to genetic or other surrounding factors and when contracted an illness a good lifestyle would not save you, medicine will. If having good health is the ability to avoid sickness, medicine do offer a prevention measures in the form of vaccines which stimulates ones immune system to produce it own antibodies, therefore making the body more resistant to incoming bacteria and viruses. Would this mean that person is much healthier? To conclude, I do not deny the importance of a healthy lifestyle but my view is that it is not enough and medicine is required to sustain and promote good health.

( order of paragraph one each): Maisarah(done), Imran(done), Felix(done), Jessica (done), Shawn, Tai Yang