Even someone who is not showing signs of sickness may still not be in the best of health. Any chronic illness can be particularly insidious.

At any moment in time, say the National Diabetes Clearing House, there are over five million people who have diabetes that is undiagnosed. A study revealed that there could be thirty million Americans who do not know they are suffering from high blood pressure. Just taking into account these two conditions shows that over thirty five million people are walking around with bad health.

We have all heard the story about if you put a frog in boiling water, it will leap straight out, but if you put the frog in cold water and slowly heat the water to boiling, then the frog will stay in the water until it is too late.

This analogy is the same for the onset of illness in sick people. If we got very sick very swiftly, we would be off to the doctors fast, but if an illness takes hold slowly over a period of time, then it can be very tricky to recognise. Firstly we may feel that something is not quite right, but we will not worry about it because we are too busy going about our daily lives to bother about taking time to go and see a doctor.

Most people follow the same daily routine of getting up, bathing, going to work, travelling home, making a meal, cleaning up, watching television and going to bed, that we tend not to notice whether we feel good or not. As long as we are physically able to go about our daily business, we figure that is good enough.

However, just because we have no signs of sickness does not mean that we can ignore our health, because if we do, that is when the real problems can start.