Health is all Wealth

Health is all Wealth

Health is one of the few blessings of Allah in the world that we do not value while it is with us, but as soon as it leaves us, we immediately realize that it was more precious than all our wealth.

By: Dr. Muhammad Umair Malik (MD)

[The author, Dr. Umair Malik, is a USA-based physician with extensive experience working with patients from around the world and has studied medicine in England, the West Indies, and the United States. This piece of article is translated from Urdu for Eastern Crescent – Editor.]

This story is surprising and mind-blowing. Once Hazrat Musa (peace be upon him) asked Allah (swt):

“O, Lord of this universe! If a person asks for one of your blessings, then what should he ask for?”

Allah Ta’ala replied: “Health.”

When I read this story, I was dumbfounded. Health is truly a great gift from Allah (swt) and the Supreme Creator might have not shown as much love and done as much planning to keep human beings healthy as much as He might have done to create the entire universe. There are such systems inside our body that when we think about them, the human intellect is amazed. Each of us is born with four and a half thousand diseases. These diseases are active all the time, but our ‘immunity’ keeps protecting our body systems from these killers. For example:

• Our mouth produces bacteria every day that weakens our heart, but when we walk fast or jog, our mouth opens, we breathe fast, this fast or heavy breathing kills these germs and thus our heart is saved from these harmful germs.
• The world’s first bypass surgery took place in May 1960, but the Creator Almighty had placed the pipes we used in this bypass, in our legs, millions of years ago.
• Kidney transplantation started on June 17, 1950, but Allah (swt) had kept a place between our two kidneys millions of years ago where the third kidney can be fit.

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• Our ribs have some very small bones. These bones were always considered redundant, but today it was found that there are a few children born in the world who have joint clavicles – can’t move necks, can’t sallow food and can’t speak like normal children do. When the surgeons analyzed the ribs and the spare bones of these children, it was found that these spare bones and rib bones are identical. So the surgeons now cut the small rib bones and fit them in the throat and thus these disabled children start living a normal life.
• Our liver is the only organ in the body that functions even after it is cut from its origin. If our finger is cut off, arm is severed or any other part of the body is amputated, it does not come to life separately, rather it is tried to be attached to its origin, while the liver is the only organ that grows back even after being amputated from the original body. Scientists wondered why the Supreme Creator – Allah has put this ability in the liver. Today it was discovered that the liver is the master organ of the body, life is not possible without it and due to this special ability it can be transplanted. Medically you can donate a liver to others.

These are some of the extraordinary miracles from Allah (swt) – the Originator of everything before us and beyond, that astonish the human minds while thousands of such miraculous blessings are hidden in our own bodies and these blessings keep us healthy. We sleep every day, our sleep is the trailer of death. Men’s drowsiness, nap, deep sleep, unconsciousness and death are the five different stages of the same sequence. When we go into deep sleep, only a stage of unconsciousness remains between us and death. We come back from the threshold of death every morning but we don’t even realize it.

Health is one of the few blessings of Allah in the world that we do not value while it is with us, but as soon as it leaves us, we immediately realize that it was more precious than all our wealth. If we were to sit down at the table one day and introspect our health from the hair on our head to our toes, we would find that every one of us is a billionaire. Our eyelids have a few muscles, these muscles help to up and down our eyelashes. If these shutters stop working, a person cannot open his eyes, he can’t see; and there is no cure, till date, for this disease in the world. More than 50 very rich people in the world are currently suffering from this disease and are ready to pay millions of dollars to surgeons and doctors around the world just to lift their eyelids.

Our ears contain a liquid equal to the tears of a pigeon. It is a liquid of mercury type. We walk straight because of this liquid. If it is lost, we cannot determine the direction, we move from our targets and start to tangle and collide here and there. Hundreds and thousands of wealthy people of the world are ready to pay millions of dollars for this drop of tears only.

People are ready to pay 40 to 50 lakh rupees for a healthy kidney. Eye cornea is sold for lakhs of rupees. A heart is worth hundreds of thousands of rupees. When you have heel pain, you are ready to spend thousands of rupees to get relief from that pain. Millions of rich people of the world suffer from back pain. Defects in the neck seals make a person’s life miserable. If only salt accumulates in the joints of the fingers, a person starts praying for death. Constipation and hemorrhoids have killed millions of people. Tooth and molar pain make nights restless. Headaches are driving thousands of people crazy. Drugs manufacturing companies which are making sugar, cholesterol and blood pressure medicines, are earning billions of dollars every year. God forbids, if you are a victim of any serious skin disease, you will walk around with lakhs of rupees in your pocket, but you may not get cured soon. Bad breathing may seem like a minor problem, but millions of people spend billions of dollars on it every year. Our stomach sometimes does not produce a special kind of acid in it and we are left “restless” in this world which is otherwise full of luxuries.

Our health is the most special blessing of Allah (swt), but we all desecrate this mercy of the Merciful. We do not thank Allah – the Almighty for this great kindness. If we get out of bed every day, we eat what we want and it gets digested, we can walk straight, run, bend and our heart, brain, liver and kidneys are working properly, if we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, touch with our hands, smell with our nose and taste with our mouth; then we all owe for these grace and mercy of Allah Ta’ala. We should thank our Creator – the Lord of this universe, for this great kindness for us because health is a blessing that is better than everything in this world. If health is permanently lost, we cannot get it back even by spending the treasures of the whole world. We cannot even straighten a single and small bone in our spine.

O Allah, thanks to you, zillions and zillions of times. “Fabi ayyi aalaai rabbikuma tukazzibaan!” [So which of the favors of your Lord would you deny?] (Al-Qur’an)