WELLNESS AND UNWELLNESS

Wellness and unwellness in a capsule

INTRODUCTION

Disease (unwellness) represents a deviation from the biological, psychological, social and spiritual dynamic balance that characterized health (wellness). Disease is a multi factorial process that occurs when the individual is incapable of coping with imposed demands. Those demands (stressors) can be physical such as excessive exposure to noise; chemical such as getting infected with toxins released by invasive bacteria; psychological such as anxiety caused by learning new skills and/or social such as poor integration to a new community.

STRESS, EUSTRESS AND DISTRESS

Stress is a feature of humanity and it is, per se, neither beneficial nor harmful. The quality depends on the magnitude of the imposed demands humans are exposed to. Demands can be avoided, ignored and or controlled in a process of defensive adaptation and transformation leading to self-preservation. Nevertheless, since most of the stressors are external (imposed demands) the adaptive process is not always easy to accomplish and/or effective.

Eustress (good stress) is the positive response to imposed demands. Here the stressors are given in doses that can be handled by the individual in a way to maintain balance but they can also induce enhancements in physiological and psychological functioning.

Distress (bad stress), on the other hand, is the negative response to imposed demands. Here those demands can’t be handled satisfactorily (inability to cope with too much, too soon and/or too strong). Then the individual enters in a state of maladaptive behavior leading to disease (unwellness).

DISEASE (UNWELLNESS)

Clinically disease can be acute or chronic.

We call it sickness when the disease is acute and temporary

We call it illness when the disease is chronic and prolonged

Sickness is a condition of sudden, temporary inability to maintain the state of dynamic balance. Sickness acutely disrupts normal healthy stability causing symptoms. In sickness physical signs may or may not present. For example, a common cold occurs with symptoms such as earache, headache, and malaise as well as signs such as cough, nasal discharge and elevated temperature. Contrarily, acute gastritis may present only with symptoms such as abdominal pain, pyrosis and nausea even in the absence of endoscopic signs of gastric inflammation. In sickness, due to the sudden and transitory characteristics of the process the regulatory mechanisms may not be seriously disrupted. Therefore, in sickness, therapy can be accomplished just by targeting the short-term alterations of the end organs.

Illness represents a state in which there is prolonged and/or permanent imbalance of the normal healthy status. Illness is not just the organic manifestation of disease; instead it means chronic imbalance. In illness, the initial coping mechanism and the simple methods used to assist the patient have failed the imposed demands and the distress remain present for longer periods of time, producing exhaustion of the individual’s defensive mechanisms. Clinically, illness comes with psychosomatic symptoms and signs as well as with social responses some of which can be accurately measured. Moreover, those measurements are not entirely objective as we use to understand objectivity under the mechanistic discourse: totally accurate, always reproducible, and quantitatively verifiable. Clinical and paraclinical studies (laboratory tests, imaging, endoscopy, etc.) are designed to document changes in structures, connections, functions and/or actions. Illness is largely affected by the perceptions and the expectations of the patient, by the intuition and the analytical reasoning of the doctor and by the significance given by the community. Here specific symptoms may not be present at all, such as in some cases of early skin cancer or hypertension or they may be very obvious such as in advanced cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or cirrhosis of the liver. Illness evolves through several non-linear stages that overlap among themselves. What is characteristic of illness is the persistent state of dominance of the sympathetic system (increased dopamine and adrenaline with the full array of non-specific symptoms and signs such as vasoconstriction ( cold extremities, elevated blood pressure, tachycardia), sleep disturbances, anorexia, bitter taste in the mouth, dyspepsia, nausea, flatulence, anxiety, mydriasis, etc. The patient is anxious and occupies most of the time concerned with the disease and the conflicts surrounding it.

STRESSORS THAT CAN CAUSE DISEASE

•        Unsanitary personal and/or communitarian conditions.
•      Insufficient immunizations.
•      Deficient nutrition (too few/too many calories, excessive consumption of      simple carbohydrates, too much animal fat, not enough water).
•       Exposure to dangerous environmental conditions.
•       Addiction to chemical products (tobacco, ETOH, “recreational” drugs) and/or to actions (sex addiction, pornography, masturbation).
•       Unhandled psychosocial influences resulting from lack of integration, victimization, persecution, insufficient education, emotional deprivation, etc. leading to anxiety, depression, poor self-esteem, promiscuity, apathy, desire to be sick, lack of purpose in life, etc.
•       Poor breathing techniques.
•       Not enough sleep. Broken work/rest cycle.
•       Unevenness between material and spiritual life (subjective well-being contributes to health and longevity)
•       Physical trauma. Accidents.
•       Genetic and congenital metabolic errors