Health, Healing and Medicine

Typology

The most widely used classifications of disease are:

1. topographic, by bodily region or system,
2. anatomic, by organ or tissue,
3. physiological, by function or effect,
4. pathological, by the nature of the disease process,
5. etiologic (causal),
6. juristic, by speed of advent of death,
7. epidemiological, and
8. statistical.

Any single disease may fall within several of these classifications.

In the topographic classification, diseases are subdivided into such categories as gastrointestinal disease, vascular disease, abdominal disease, and chest disease. Various specializations within medicine follow such topographic or systemic divisions, so that there are physicians who are essentially vascular surgeons, for example, or clinicians who are specialized in gastrointestinal disease. Similarly, some physicians have become specialized in chest disease and concentrate principally on diseases of the heart and lungs.

In the anatomic classification, disease is categorized by the specific organ or tissue affected; hence, heart disease, liver disease, and lung disease. Medical specialties such as cardiology are restricted to diseases of a single organ, in this case the heart. Such a classification has its greatest use in identifying the various kinds of disease that affect a particular organ. The heart is a good example to consider. By the segregation of cardiac disease it has been made apparent that heart disease is now the most important cause of death in the United States and in most other industrialized nations. Moreover, it has become apparent that disease caused by atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries is by far the most important form of heart disease. In making a diagnosis of cardiac disease in an elderly patient, the cardiologist must first determine whether this disease of the coronary arteries is responsible for the heart’s failure to function normally.

The physiological classification of disease is based on the underlying functional derangement produced by a specific disorder. Included in this classification are such designations as respiratory and metabolic disease. Respiratory diseases are those that interfere with the intake and expulsion of air and the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide in the lungs. Metabolic diseases are those in which disturbances of the body’s chemical processes are a basic feature. Diabetes and gout are examples.

The pathological classification of disease considers the nature of the disease process. Neoplastic and inflammatory disease are examples. Neoplastic disease includes the whole range of tumors, particularly cancers, and their effect on human beings.

The etiologic classification of disease is based on the cause, when known. This classification is particularly important and useful in the consideration of biotic disease. On this basis disease might be classified as staphylococcal or rickettsial or fungal, to cite only a few instances. It is important to know, for example, what kinds of disease staphylococci produce in human beings. It is well known that they cause skin infections and pneumonia, but it is also important to note how often they cause meningitis, abscesses in the liver, and kidney infections. The sexually transmitted diseases syphilis and gonorrhea are further examples of diseases classified by etiology.

The juristic basis of the classification of disease is concerned with the legal circumstances in which death occurs. It is principally involved with sudden death, the cause of which is not clearly evident. Thus, on a juristic basis some deaths and diseases are classified as medical-legal and fall within the jurisdiction of coroners and medical examiners. A person living alone is found dead in bed—dead of natural causes or killed? Had the person who dropped dead on the street been given some poison that took a short time to act? Much less dramatic, but perhaps more common, are disease and death caused by exposure of the individual to some unrecognized danger to health in working or living conditions. Could the illness or disease be attributable to fumes or dusts in a factory? These are examples of the many types of disease and death that fall properly in this classification.

The epidemiological classification of disease deals with the incidence, distribution, and control of disorders in a population. To use the example of typhoid, a disease spread through contaminated food and water, it first becomes important to establish that the disease observed is truly caused by Salmonella typhi, the typhoid organism. Once the diagnosis is established, it is obviously important to know the number of cases, whether the cases were scattered over the course of a year or occurred within a short period, and what the geographic distribution is. It is critically important that the precise address and activities of the patients be established. Two widely separated locations within the same city might be found to have clusters of cases of typhoid all arising virtually simultaneously. It might be found that each of these clusters revolved about a family unit including cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and friends, suggesting that in some way personal relationships might be important. Further investigation might disclose that all the infected persons had dined at one time or at short intervals in a specific home. It might further be found that the person who had prepared the meal had recently visited some rural area and had suffered a mild attack of the disease and was now spreading it to family and friends by unknowing contamination of food. This hypothetical case suggests the importance of the etiologic, as well as the epidemiological, classification of disease.

The statistical basis of classification of disease employs analysis of the incidence (the numbers of new cases of a specific disease that occur during a certain period) and the prevalence rate (number of cases of a disease in existence at a certain time) of diseases. If, for example, a disease has an incidence rate of 100 cases per year in a given locale and, on the average, the affected persons live three years with the disease, it is obvious that the prevalence of the disease is 300. Statistical classification is an additional important tool in the study of possible causes of disease. These studies, as well as epidemiological, nutritional, and pathological analyses, have made it clear, for example, that diet is an important consideration in the possible causation of atherosclerosis. The statistical analyses drew attention to the role of high levels of fats and carbohydrates in the diet in the possible causation of atherosclerosis. The analyses further drew attention to the fact that certain populations that do not eat large quantities of animal fats and subsist largely on vegetable oils and fish have a much lower incidence of atherosclerosis. Thus, statistical surveys are of great importance in the study of human disease.

Infectious Disease

(Largely from https://www.britannica.com/science/infectious-disease)

An infectious disease is a process caused by an agent, often a type of microorganism, that impairs a person’s health. In many cases, infectious disease can be spread from person to person, either directly (e.g., via skin contact) or indirectly (e.g., via contaminated food or water).

An infectious disease can differ from simple infection, which is the invasion of and replication in the body by any of various agents—including bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoans, and worms—as well as the reaction of tissues to their presence or to the toxins that they produce. When health is not altered, the process is called a subclinical infection. Thus, a person may be infected but not have an infectious disease. This principle is illustrated by the use of vaccines for the prevention of infectious diseases. For example, a virus such as that which causes measles may be attenuated (weakened) and used as an immunizing agent. The immunization is designed to produce a measles infection in the recipient but generally causes no discernible alteration in the state of health. It produces immunity to measles without producing a clinical illness (an infectious disease).

The most important barriers to invasion of the human host by infectious agents are the skin and mucous membranes (the tissues that line the nose, mouth, and upper respiratory tract). When these tissues have been broken or affected by earlier disease, invasion by infectious agents may occur. These infectious agents may produce a local infectious disease, such as boils, or may invade the bloodstream and be carried throughout the body, producing generalized bloodstream infection (septicemia) or localized infection at a distant site, such as meningitis (an infection of the coverings of the brain and spinal cord). Infectious agents swallowed in food and drink can attack the wall of the intestinal tract and cause local or general disease. The conjunctiva, which covers the front of the eye, may be penetrated by viruses that cause a local inflammation of the eye or that pass into the bloodstream and cause a severe general disease, such as smallpox. Infectious agents can enter the body through the genital tract, causing the acute inflammatory reaction of gonorrhea in the genital and pelvic organs or spreading out to attack almost any organ of the body with the more chronic and destructive lesions of syphilis. Even before birth, viruses and other infectious agents can pass through the placenta and attack developing cells, so that an infant may be diseased or deformed at birth.

From conception to death, humans are targets for attack by multitudes of other living organisms, all of them competing for a place in the common environment. The air people breathe, the soil they walk on, the waters and vegetation around them, the buildings they inhabit and work in, all can be populated with forms of life that are potentially dangerous. Domestic animals may harbor organisms that are a threat, and wildlife teems with agents of infection that can afflict humans with serious disease. However, the human body is not without defenses against these threats, for it is equipped with a comprehensive immune system that reacts quickly and specifically against disease organisms when they attack. Survival throughout the ages has depended largely on these reactions, which today are supplemented and strengthened through the use of medical drugs.

Chronic Disease

When chronic disease is the result of a deficiency, drugs aren’t going to solve the problem. As I’m sure you realize, multiple sclerosis is not a deficiency of the latest multiple-sclerosis-disease-modifying drug like Copaxone, just as fatigue is not a deficiency of wakefulness-promoting drugs like Provigil or even caffeine, and depression is not a deficiency of antidepressants like Prozac. No, these problems are not deficiencies of drugs, but they are triggered by deficiencies in your cells that lead to broken biochemistry and impaired signaling between your cells. When you look at chronic disease in this way, it’s obvious that you should treat the cellular deficiencies that cause diseases to develop in the first place instead of just treating the symptoms, which is what most conventional pharmaceutical treatments do.

Unless you understand what your body actually needs to function and heal, however, then you can’t possibly make wise decisions about what you should do to keep your body going. You might decide to take someone else’s advice about diet—advice that might be motivated by wanting to help you to lose weight or gain strength. It might even be based on political, environmental, spiritual, or ethical concerns. Unless you understand what your body actually needs, you won’t know what advice to take and what advice to leave. You won’t know what foods to choose. You won’t know which diet is the right one for your condition. You won’t know how to fuel your own cells for optimal health.

I challenge you to stop believing everything you read and everything everyone tells you, and to learn something about biology and biochemistry so you can make your own decisions. When considering nutrition at the cellular level, we have plenty of scientific studies to guide us. We don’t know everything there is to know about nutrition yet—not by a long shot—but we do know a lot about how to facilitate many of the biochemical repairs we need. Science has already demonstrated that when you give your cells more of what they need, your cells will thrive, even heal. If you deprive them of essential nutrients, they will deteriorate. They might not die—at least, not right away—but they’ll soon begin to falter in their functionality, and that is exactly where problems start.

As a doctor and a scientist as well as a patient, I base the decisions I make for my own health and for the health of others on science. I would never ask anyone to just believe me. I want you to understand why I designed the Wahls Protocol the way I did. If you don’t understand why you must make the dietary and lifestyle changes I suggest, you might not be willing to stick to them. The results you’ll experience by following the Wahls Protocol speak for themselves, of course, but an informed and proactive patient is an empowered patient. I want to empower you, so before we begin—before I give you even one bit of advice about what you should or shouldn’t be eating, drinking, or doing—let’s take a look at what’s really going on in your body.

Wahls MD Terry and Eve Adamson: The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine, 2014

Autoimmune Disease

Auto means “self” and autoimmunity is a condition in which the immune cells become confused and begin attacking cellular structures of the person’s own body. All of our cells have receptors on the cell membrane that allow the immune cells to recognize our cells as part of our own bodies. When the body doesn’t see or sense these “self” receptors, it interprets a structure or substance as foreign and a possible threat. Is it a virus? Bacteria? An object that shouldn’t be there? Your body doesn’t know. It only knows “self” and “not self,” and if it is “not self,” it must then determine whether something is “not self but safe to ignore” or “not self and dangerous.” Your immune cells will ignore “self” molecules and the “not-self-but-safe” molecules, but the immune cells are terribly threatened by anything seen as “not self and dangerous,” and they will vigorously attack these molecules in an attempt to damage or destroy the dangerous foreigner so it can’t harm the body and endanger survival.

It’s a good system—when it works. It helps to keep you healthy by attacking the legitimately dangerous viruses and bacteria that can invade your system. With autoimmunity, however, the wires get crossed and, for some unknown reason, the immune cells mistake proteins that are genuinely “self” as foreign, and more specifically as “not self and dangerous.” The results can be devastating. Which structures the body attacks determines what kind of autoimmune condition the person has. When the body attacks the myelin—the fatty sheath around nerve cells—resulting in nervous system damage, then we say that person has multiple sclerosis. If the immune cells attack the skin, resulting in rashes, blisters, and other visible skin conditions, we may name the condition psoriasis, eczema, or a blistering condition such as bullous pemphigoid. If the body attacks lung tissue, resulting in wheezing and constricted airways, then we call it asthma. If it attacks the thyroid, resulting in a wide range of symptoms related to thyroid function, then we may call it autoimmune thyroid disease. If it attacks the joints, resulting in pain and stiffness, then the person may be diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis or systemic lupus. Although all these diseases present differently, the root cause for the more than 140 different types of autoimmune conditions is the loss of tolerance of “self” in the body, and the attack by the immune cells on “self,” causing the symptoms of the disease.

Actually, autoimmune disease may be a factor in more diseases than previously thought. Research is revealing that there may be an autoimmune component to a host of other chronic conditions, like heart disease and high blood pressure, migraines, and mood disorders. Research is ongoing in this area, and I believe we’ve only scratched the surface in understanding the effects of autoimmunity on our bodies.

Why would the complex and intelligent human body mistakenly attack its own tissues? There is a conventional view of autoimmune disease, and then there is a functional medicine view. Let’s consider both.

The conventional medicine view of autoimmune disease says that the body has lost the ability to recognize its own internal protein components as native components of itself, but that we don’t know why. Scientists are aware that all chronic disease states begin as the result of broken chemistry and confused signaling between cells.

The drugs conventional doctors prescribe for an autoimmune disease make the immune cells weaker so that they cannot attack the body as vigorously. All of the disease-modifying drugs for MS and the other autoimmune conditions focus on blocking some part of the body’s immune response, using various mechanisms. Some disease-modifying drugs for autoimmune disorders act as a poison to rapidly dividing cells (the immune cells are some of the most rapidly dividing cells in the body) so that they cannot work as effectively at attacking (or protecting) the body. Some disease-modifying drugs are designed to block a specific pathway in the immune process.

The problem with the conventional focus on drugs is that study after study has shown that diet, toxin exposure, and activity level account for 70 to 95 percent of the risk for autoimmune disease, mental health issues, cancer, and, in fact, most chronic diseases. Drugs do not improve the quality of your diet. They do not reduce your toxin exposure—and often increase it. And they certainly don’t increase your activity level. Rarely will they help lower the chronic stress you feel in your life.

Functional medicine looks more deeply at the reasons why the body has lost its tolerance to its own proteins in the first place...

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