your health is your wealth

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a proverb asserting that good health is the most fundamental and valuable form of wealth, because without it no amount of financial or material prosperity can be fully enjoyed; the saying is used to counsel investment in preventive health behaviours — exercise, diet, sleep, stress management, regular medical care — over the short-term economic gains that may come from neglecting one's health; it also serves as a reminder to those who have recovered from serious illness, who experience disability, or who care for sick loved ones, of the radical difference between life lived in health and life constrained by illness; in health economics the saying prefigures the concept of the value of a statistical life, which attempts to quantify in monetary terms the benefits of health interventions and safety measures