Good health was considered somethingto be fostered to participate fully in the life of thecommunity for one’s own sake, as well as for one’sresponsibility to the social group.

Food is veryimportant in Filipino culture and symbolizes sharingand reciprocity. 26-28 Relationships are reestablishedthrough food. Food is always served to guests; to noteat the host’s food is to reject these social ties, or com-paradizo. To refuse food, even for health reasons, hasimplications for the quality of the food served andbrings shame on the person offering it.

Filipino Americans expressed a sense of responsi-bility for maintaining good health, but their responsi-bility was to the family and social group rather thanindividual responsibility as an end in itself.

A 70-year-old man described a2-part process: he addressed issues of regaining bal-ance first, and then described a period of analysis:“I just calm myself. I don’t pay attention to my sick-ness. I don’t feed it with concern. I just relax, and thenit goes away. You just have to ignore it. Afterwards youhave to think about what kind of medicine you willtake. Why did it happen? Of course, you can sort ofthink about what will get rid of it.

The signs thatrespondents described were not necessarily widely heldsymptoms of a particular health condition but could behighly idiosyncratic. For example, one 75-year-old mansaid, “When my high blood pressure acts up, it’s likemy body stiffens. I feel like my tongue swells up, andthen I have to take my medicine right away. Last nightI was like that. I guess it’s because my pressure went upagain.

“In the Philippines I already had high bloodbecause I worry too much. I didn’t get to sleep much.Of course I had to work hard because I was the headperson. That’s probably why my blood pressure wentup. That’s what caused me to be sick.

It’s so cold your body doesn’tsweat

Semistructured hour-longinterviews addressed interpretations of illness, self-carepractices, and use of and access to health care. Inter-views were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim.Respondents were interviewed in their language ofchoice, either Tagalog or English. With the exceptionof 2 respondents who were interviewed in English,respondents were interviewed in Tagalog by a fluentTagalog speaker.

The principle of balance, or timbang, is central to Filipinoconcepts of health, and balance is sought in all socialrelationships.

Respondents who were recent immigrants to the Unit-ed States described 2 types of body imbalances asexplanations for why they became ill: (1) those causedby humoral pathology and (2) those caused by stress.Moving from a hot place, the Philippines, to a coldplace, a coastal US city, was repeatedly given as a rea-son for the onset of illness.