Mr. Jones we have your diagnosis.
Diagnosis causes a range of emotions when we hear it. The range can be from basic concern to absolute fear and occasionally thank God somebody knows what is wrong with me. The word diagnosis is defined by the appearance of what is wrong. The actual disease itself. There is another definition of diagnosis- the root cause of the disease.
The 1st definition names the disease and the treatment is usually to suppress the symptoms or to cut it out. There is no attempt to find the underlying physiology of why the disease developed. Everybody with the same set of symptoms is treated the same.
The 2nd definition of disease investigates biochemical imbalances, toxicities, metabolic imbalances, genetic predispositions, infections, nutritional deficiencies, lifestyle, and many more factors that is too lengthy to discuss in this article. All of these factors, to keep it simple, cause an inflammatory process. If you remember in past articles I discussed the root cause of chronic illnesses is inflammation. Inflammation is caused by the factors I listed above and very often a combination of them.
Let’s take the example of fight or flight response. This is a primordial response to something that can harm us. This response prepares the body for strenuous physical activity. This is a catabolic process which means to break down. It ramps up our ability to produce energy, changes in blood flow from our internal organs to our muscles, and changes hormones to produce adrenaline and suppressing reparative hormones. Healing and repair of the body cannot be done while the body is in a fight or flight response. This is an inflammatory process which is necessary if you’re running away from a tiger. Unfortunately, we are almost always in a fight or flight response. There are bills to pay, taking our children to various events, and oh by the way the IRS called. We also have the ability to play the tape in our head of negative past events and fear of future events.
In an inflammatory state our body is functioning in catabolic state. Healing and repair can’t occur. We developed metabolic imbalances, we don’t eat a healthy diet- we don’t have time. We change the expression of our genes- epigenetics. We are more susceptible to getting sick. With time all of these changes cause and named disease.
When you’re not feeling well and do not have a named diagnosis, this is the time to investigate what is changing in the way my body functions.
