Health Cannot Be Bought or Sold — No Matter What They Promise
- Madhukar Dama
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
1. What is Health, Really?
Health is not just the absence of disease. It is not a medical report with normal values. It is not your body weight, or your blood sugar numbers, or how active you appear on a fitness app.
Health is the smooth, silent, invisible working of your body, mind, breath, and emotions — all in harmony.
It is how you sleep at night.
How calm you are in daily stress.
How strong your digestion is.
How clear your skin and eyes feel.
How joyful you feel when there’s nothing to gain.
Health is a natural consequence of living in tune with your body’s needs and nature’s rhythms.
It is not something external that can be inserted, injected, applied, or imported.
2. What Truly Creates Health?
Science and traditional wisdom both agree: health is created when many small daily habits support your body.
What you eat — fresh, local, seasonal, simple food.
How much you move — natural walking, stretching, manual work.
Your rest — deep sleep, regular sleep-wake cycles.
Breathing — slow, full, conscious breath.
Sunlight — daily exposure to morning light.
Water — clean, adequate hydration.
Emotions — honest expression, time in silence, laughter.
Relationships — connection, kindness, forgiveness.
Nature — time spent in soil, trees, rain, rivers.
Purpose — a reason to wake up each morning.
No medicine or machine can replace these. When these are absent, even the best treatment fails.
When these are present, even a diseased body begins to heal.
3. Why Can’t Health Be Bought?
Because buying is a transaction.
But health is a process.
You can buy drugs, doctors, diets, devices. But they cannot give you health unless your own habits change.
Think about it:
Can a pill improve your digestion if you overeat every night?
Can a gym membership help if you sit 10 hours a day?
Can a superfood make up for daily stress and late nights?
Can meditation apps help when your phone never leaves your hand?
No.
You can’t outsource health.
You can’t fast-track it.
You can’t delegate it.
You have to live it.
4. India and the World: A Shared Lie
Whether in rural Bihar or in Manhattan, the same lie is sold:
> “We will give you health — just pay us.”
In India, this comes in the form of:
Expensive check-ups and scans that detect but don’t heal.
Hospital chains that push unneeded surgeries.
Packaged ayurvedic brands that sell weak, mass-produced pills.
Wellness resorts that charge lakhs for what your grandmother knew.
Globally, it’s even slicker:
Billion-dollar pharma ads convincing healthy people they are sick.
Fitness apps selling monthly hope.
“Biohacking” tools for the rich that don’t work long term.
Health insurance that pays for treatment, not prevention.
Whether in local clinics or luxury hospitals, health is being sold as a commodity — and people are paying with money, trust, and their future.
5. Who Are These People Claiming to Sell Health?
Let’s be clear: almost everyone who says “we will give you health” is running a business.
Here’s who’s profiting while you’re believing:
1. Pharmaceutical Companies
They make money when you stay sick.
No incentive to truly cure. Just “manage” symptoms. Lifelong.
2. Corporate Hospitals
They earn from tests, beds, surgeries.
Preventive health is just a marketing term.
3. Doctors Under Pressure
Many are honest. But many are forced into over-diagnosing, over-prescribing.
4. Insurance Companies
They don't prevent illness. They profit from the fear of it.
5. Ayurvedic/Fitness Influencers
They sell dreams. Detox teas, “superfoods,” powders. Few are real practitioners.
6. Wellness Apps and Tech Startups
Trackers, subscriptions, “AI health plans.” But no real accountability or follow-up.
7. NGOs and Government Health Campaigns
Often funded by pharma or multinational food companies. Deep conflict of interest.
8. Health Retreats and Resorts
They offer expensive shortcuts that last only as long as your vacation.
Everyone is selling the illusion of control.
They give you tools without the discipline.
They offer labels without healing.
They sell hope without the work.
6. What Do They Really Sell?
Pills that suppress symptoms — not address causes.
Tests that scare you — not guide you.
Diets that confuse — not simplify.
Gadgets that beep — not heal.
Language that medicalizes your life — “pre-diabetic,” “risk factor,” “protocol,” “management.”
You become a customer, not a healed person.
And the industry thrives — as long as you don’t heal.
7. What is the Real Path to Health?
It’s old-fashioned.
It’s unglamorous.
It takes time.
But it works.
Here is the real path:
Wake with the sun. Sleep early.
Eat freshly cooked, natural food. Avoid packeted and processed things.
Sit in silence each day. Just breathe.
Move your body in natural ways.
Avoid excess: too much screen, sugar, sitting, speaking.
Use herbal home remedies when needed.
Respect your body’s signals — pain, tiredness, hunger, thirst.
Spend time with elders, with children, in gardens, in temples.
Let go of what you cannot control.
Keep life simple.
These cost little. But they demand attention, discipline, and humility.
No one can do them for you. You have to live this. Every day.
8. A Final Word
Health is not in the hospital.
Health is not in a bottle.
Health is not in someone else's hands.
It is in your daily choices, your environment, and your inner state.
Don’t wait for a doctor to give it.
Don’t wait for a product to fix it.
Don’t fall for those who claim they can sell it.
Because health cannot be purchased,
and it cannot be sold,
no matter who claims to do so —
not even the one in white coat or saffron robe.
You can only earn it — by living rightly.
That’s the quiet truth no one profits from.
But it is the only truth that heals.
---
you can't buy a sunrise
you can buy a pill,
a scan,
a second opinion,
but you can't buy a sunrise
or a bowel movement
or a quiet breath that doesn’t catch halfway.
you can pay for a room with white walls
and blinking machines
and a man with degrees
but you can’t pay for peace when you're scared
or real sleep without a screen glowing next to your head.
they sell it in packs now.
health.
in bars, in sachets, in apps with reminders.
“30 days to detox”
“reverse aging in 21 days”
“gut reset”
but your gut isn’t a fridge
and your soul can’t be reset
like a router.
you walk into the clinic
and they say:
“sir, please lie down,”
but they won’t say:
“sir, please stop lying to yourself.”
they’ve dressed it up
sold it in air-conditioned aisles
the blood pressure machines beside candy racks
the multivitamins next to chips
the yoga mat made in a sweatshop.
they keep telling you:
you’re pre-diabetic
pre-hypertensive
pre-everything
like a movie trailer
for a life you’ll never enjoy.
you sit on a leather couch
waiting for your number,
holding a bill for ₹17,500
for nothing that made you feel better
except that it looked “professional.”
your grandma
had cracked heels
but steady hands.
she chewed her food
prayed with her body
and never took a “wellness break.”
her medicine was
sleeping on time,
crying in private,
and boiling leaves she didn’t name.
somewhere along the road
you traded
clay pots for protein shakes,
sunlight for sunscreen,
sweat for air fresheners,
and thought you were progressing.
now you’re 34
and your back hurts
from a chair you ordered online
to work a job you hate
to pay for a treatment
for a body you forgot how to live in.
they tell you health is
in a test report,
a lab value,
a fitness band,
a plastic bottle.
they don’t say
it’s in how deeply you fart
after a meal made with love.
in how you poop
before sunrise.
in how children fall asleep on your belly.
in how you forget your phone
in another room for three hours
and nothing breaks.
every week
someone tells you
what to avoid:
gluten, sugar, rice, fruits, salt, air, water, thoughts.
but no one tells you
what to return to:
early light, belly laughter,
knees in the soil,
eating with your fingers,
forgiving your own stupid choices.
you wanted shortcuts.
you got subscriptions.
you wanted balance.
you got a smartwatch.
you wanted sleep.
you got sedatives.
you wanted to feel okay.
you got experts.
they took your symptoms
and made them a market.
they made your body
a customer.
the doctor writes
“lifestyle disease”
as if lifestyle was a luxury.
as if you didn’t already know
you were killing yourself slowly
with screens and salt and sorrow.
but health isn’t found
in 4G downloads
or pharmaceutical reps
or powder that costs ₹2000/kg.
it’s in a mango eaten fully ripe
with juice running down your wrist.
it’s in the sweat from sweeping your house.
it’s in the smell of the earth after rain.
it’s in six hours of uninterrupted sleep
on a rough cotton bed
with your windows open.
they’ll keep selling you the dream.
you’ll keep scrolling.
someone will say,
“Try this new therapy.”
“Join this new plan.”
“Visit this new center.”
but the truth won’t change.
health is not for sale.
it never was.
you can buy delay.
you can buy silence.
you can buy comfort in the waiting room.
but you can’t buy the ability
to digest pain
to befriend time
to feel whole.
so the next time
someone tells you
they can fix you —
remember:
they only fix what’s broken.
and you’re not broken.
you’re buried.
under convenience,
under lies,
under fear,
under advertising.
you don’t need treatment.
you need to come back
to the truth
that no one profits from.
and that truth is this:
you can’t buy a sunrise.
you can only wake up for it.
---
