‘I’ve become so healthy that I can’t live anymore’ exploring ‘health as balance’ discourses and the construction of health and identity among young urban South African adults

Social science research on health in South Africa tends to focus on illness and how to address health problems.

Qualitative empirical research focussing on lay understandings and experiences of healthiness, or health discourses, in South Africa is fairly limited.

This article addresses this gap by critically exploring how young South African adults used discourses of balance to make sense of what it means to be a healthy person and highlights the implications of these discourses for identity.