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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

The notion that people without diseases are considered healthy people is undiscriminating, partial and incorrect. Healthy people are those who pay attention to their own health and diet in daily life, who will make appropriate arrangements of their work, learning, rest, entertainment and physical exercise as well as social contacts. They are energetic, vigorous, having ease of mind and have a strong resistance to diseases, keeping a close eye on their own mental and physical state.

There is another group of people, called sub-healthy people by some scholars, who always feel weary, nervous, sleepless and palpitated. Although these symptoms disappear sometimes without medication but they can not be eliminated thoroughly. They are not considered diseased in the hospital. The state of these people' bodies is called sub-healthy state, or gray state by some scholars. It lies between illness and health: little harm seems to have been done to the body with only a decrease in physical functions; in fact, its potential threat can not be neglected, for it is often the prelude of some chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and cancer.

One main cause of this phenomenon is the lack of correct understanding of health and the lack of awareness to the factors threatening their own health, including the mental stress and working pressure caused by the complexity of different relationships in modern society, unreasonable diet and environmental pollution brought about by modern industrialization, etc. Therefore it is necessary to provide people with a good understanding of health and means of acquiring it through the promotion of health knowledge. Those who hold the notion that "out of illness means health" should change it so as to obtain a really healthy life, for "out of illness is not equal to health and "no sense of being sick is not equal to out of illness".

According to a report of WHO, health and...