Wellness may feel like a modern concept, associated with health-tracker apps, screen time, and green smoothies. But the concept of actively trying to live a healthy life by keeping the body in good condition is not new. In fact, systems of preventive health date back more than 2,000 years to the medical traditions of the ancient Mediterranean world.
speaking on life lessons from history series From HistoryExtra Podcast, Sasha Handley, professor of early modern history at the University of Manchester, says there used to be a “brilliant preventive health care culture” based on advice that is outdated. ancient Greece.
As she explains it, there was a list of six lifestyle factors and behaviors that physicians, medical practitioners, and lay people alike knew they needed to take care of their long-term health. These were the ‘six unnatural’ and ancient greece Handley believes that “according to the wisdom of the time, moderation of all six of those things was the key to long-term good health”. The term “non-natural” describes factors external to the body that can be managed or regulated, as opposed to “natural”, which were innate characteristics of the body.
So what were these six factors, and how much do they match modern thinking?
fresh air
Handley says the first non-natural thing to take care of was fresh air—that is, “getting enough of it and making sure you’re not inhaling foul-smelling or contaminated air.”
The Greeks thought that ‘bad air’ could cause disease and advocated good air flow within homes to reduce exposure to stagnant air.
Today, we know that there is no single concept of ‘bad air’. But there are pollutants in the air that can be dangerous to people, and we know that some diseases are airborne.
Food and Drink
It was considered important, says Handley, that a person be “eating and drinking the right kinds of things for body composition, but also at the right times of day.”
The principles of what is good to eat and when is it good to eat were based on the four gunas: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Different foods, being either cold or hot, or wet or dry, affect the balance of the four humors in the body, producing different results for the health and constitution of people. For example, if someone is feeling excessive “heat” they may be advised to give them cool foods like cucumber or lettuce.
Galen, a Greek physician and philosopher to whom the idea of ​​the six non-naturals is attributed, thought that hot food produced yellow bile, while cold food produced phlegm. Galen practiced in the second century AD and became one of the most influential medical authorities in history.
Now, our understanding of food and diet is more scientific. But we know that certain nutrients have specific health benefits; Protein helps contribute to maintaining muscle mass, while vegetables can be a source of various micronutrients and vitamins.
exercise and rest
Getting adequate exercise and rest was also considered important. Exercise was observed to have a desiccating effect on the body, and physicians recommended exercise to patients for both prevention and treatment of disease. In comic thought the body was constantly changing in balance; Movement was one of the tools available to correct excess moisture or dullness.
Galen thought work and exercise were equivalent, defining them as vigorous activities that take your breath away. However, the exercises he prescribed to his patients were more moderate. He recommended exercises that involved a small ball.
Massage and bathing were also seen to have similar effects to exercise, something that is echoed in modern wellness trends centered around saunas, sports massage and cold plunges.
sleep and wake up
Sleep and dreams were important parts of ancient Greek philosophy as well as their medical knowledge. Dreams were considered evidence of the state of the body, and so they were helpful in diagnosing medical problems. But they were also important from within ancient greece religion.
The ancient Greeks believed that gods could communicate through dreams and that sleep had healing properties due to its association with the gods.
We may not bring our dreams into doctors’ offices these days, but research increasingly shows sleep’s powerful impact on physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Recent studies show that getting enough sleep may reduce the rates of chronic diseases like dementia, diabetes, and heart disease.
emission and retention
The fifth non-natural “sounds quite graphic, but it’s emission and retention,” Handley says. “This refers to bowel habits, but also things like sweating appropriately and keeping the body at the right temperature.”
It was thought that emissions, in all their forms, helped keep the four humors in balance. If humor accumulates excessively, it can be expelled through sweat, urination, bleeding, or bowel movements. Bloodletting became a standard treatment especially in later medical traditions influenced by humoral theory.
Read more Blood, Guts and Spectacle: 6 Shocking Events from the History of Ancient Roman Gladiators
Although we don’t think of regulating our excretions in terms of bloodletting and purification like the Greeks, the growing awareness of gut health – and hence its effect on the gut – is perhaps a modern descendant of this idea.
impulses of mind
Handley says, “The last are commonly called the passions of the mind, which we today read as the emotions.” “So emotional health, making sure you’re not getting too angry, too sad, and keeping your mind and body in good balance.”
Different emotions were associated with excess of the four humors, so keeping your emotions under control contributed to your humor balance. Too much blood can make you too happy and too much phlegm can make you too shy, while too much black bile can make you apathetic and too much yellow bile can make you angry.
Obviously this idea ties into our modern understanding of mental health – especially now that we know physical fitness and exercise are linked to mental health.
How similar are non-natural and ‘well-being’ today?
Nowadays we consider ‘wellness’ as different from ‘health’. Where health is the absence of disease, and well-being is a more general emotional and physical well-being that we can influence through lifestyle factors.
The ancient Greeks thought the same. Health was seen as the responsibility of individuals to control their non-natural people to take care of their health, and perhaps even avoid going to the doctor.
There was an element of taking personal responsibility for good health, which led to the idea that bad habits could cause certain diseases. But six non-natural ones, acting together with ‘natural’ – or innate factors over which we have no control – also cause disease.
Today, we see things similarly: some diseases and conditions are caused by lifestyle factors, while others develop independently of the way we live.
And like modern ‘fitness’, ancient Greek health was about much more than just the body. Medical knowledge was intertwined with ethics, morality, politics, and philosophy – which is why many of the most famous Greek physicians, such as Galen and Hippocrates, were also philosophers, and many philosophers also considered issues of the body.
The ancient Greeks actually thought that achieving perfect health was essentially impossible because it required a precise balance of humors, which changed every day. Instead, a ‘neutral’ body was the goal – something that does not necessarily align with modern ideas on health optimization and biohacking.
Dr. David Musgrove talks to Sasha Handley HistoryExtra podcast. listen to full conversation.
