This article comes from Healthy Times Online.

“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”
Hippocrates, Precepts, Greek physician (460 BC - 377 BC)

Did you ever wonder why the flu or a cold can afflict almost everyone in the office and one person just never seems to come down sick? Why does someone get the sniffles while another person is miserable for weeks?

Like the growth of any living thing, a disease needs a hospitable environment in which to prosper. When a person’s immune system is up to the job, the infection is fought off without difficulty. If the strength of a person’s immune system is not up to the job, then the person gets “sick.” The lack of sickness in a person often has more to do with the power of the person’s health and less to do with what “bugs” they may encounter.

Our capacity to live and grow is sometimes known as vitality. Vitality is the energy and healthy capacity for activity that each one of us possesses. It is not just the absence of disease but a natural active force present in all living forms. It is difficult to define vitality because vitality is measured only indirectly by its effects. Sort of like measuring electricity – when we press the light switch on we know electricity is present by the way in which the lights go on or not. The same works with the vitality present in our bodies. If we have enough, everything works well.

Modern medical science has even developed a separate field of study, called psychoneuroimmunology, which examines the integration of the mind and the body in the defense against infection. Excessive strain on our minds (something we all know as stress) can affect our health in the same way as too much damage to parts of our body. Both situations can leave us open to poor health. What modern medical study is discovering is that there are many complicated factors that comprise the “health” of a person. Click here to read the rest of this article.