What is the difference between being disease free and being healthy?

Answer 1

"being healthy" is a general statement of health status. Disease is a specific instance of diagnosed illness. Technically, disease does not exist until it is diagnosed by a doctor, although it can be diagnosed 'after the fact'. Healthiness always exists, unless you are dead.

Health is the super-set of all healthiness and illness. All disease is a subset of health. It is possible to be healthy and disease free. It is also possible to be healthy in many ways, and to have one or more diseases. A trivial example, if you are scratched by a cat, you might suffer a mild infection, but otherwise you are 'healthy'.

Healthiness has many dimensions, from genetics to diet, to cells, tissues, organs, systems, body, mind, spirit, and community. Each of the dimensions has many possible measurements of healthiness. For example, your circulatory system might have a healthy blood pressure level and a healthy pulse - even though you are suffering from cancer or from a cold (or both).

Each healthiness (scale of health) can be measured on a continuum from very healthy to very unhealthy. Unhealthiness is the inverse of healthiness. If we measure heart healthiness on a scale, for example a scale of 0 to 100, a score of 80 healthiness would indicate a score of 20 unhealthiness.

Each disease has specific measures required for diagnosis, although there may be differences of opinion between doctors and also differences between medical associations in different countries. Any doctor can use these defined measurements to diagnose a disease or not.

However, health cannot be diagnosed. As a result, many doctors, and many patients, view 'being healthy' as the condition of being disease free. This is a simplistic view that ignores many aspects of healthiness.

Answer 2

I think that being disese free means you dont have a disease but you can be sick and healthy means you dont have a disease and your not sick of anything.