Fitness is great, but it is not an insurance policy towards health.

We’ve all heard a story about so-and-so who seemed to be at the peak of his health: he ate organic food, exercised daily, just ran a marathon, and then…poof! He has a heart attack, or some other sudden health crisis that seemed to come from nowhere. It can be scary, because we don’t understand that fitness does not equal health.

So, what is the difference? Dr. Tony Murczek says that super strong NFL linebackers and marathon athletes may be physically fit, but there is something out of balance in their whole-body system that causes them to have a fatal or near fatal crisis. Fitness measure the amount of physical capability whereas health measures a person’s well being and absence of illness and disease. In a western biomedical model, health is defined as the state where all the systems of the body- skeletal, nervous, muscular, digestive, hormonal, lymphatic are working in an optimal way. In Chinese and Naturopathic medicine, how these systems relate and communicate to one another is also key to health.

What is the difference between fitness and health?

Watch this series of videos. Fitness vs. Health is #5 of 8 short clips.