Concepts of balance
Many cultures equate balance with health and imbalance with illness.17 There was a strong and almost universal belief among the Bangladeshi informants that both the onset and the control of diabetes depended on the balance of food entering the body and on balanced emission of body fluids such as sweat, semen, urine, menstrual blood, etc. Excess emission was perceived to deplete the internal stock, low quantity of emissions to indicate inner build up and putrefaction, and thin quality a weakening of the internal stock. Weakness (as in diabetes) was perceived to occur as a result of such depletion or weakening