Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire

Where there’s Smoke there’s Fire

Written by Dr. Mike

Diseases come in all shapes and sizes… they take on different names, characteristics, pathogenicity… New diseases  are coming out every year, and as a result the medical diagnostic manuals get thicker and thicker year in and year out. Trying to understand each and every disease, while trying to keep up with the influx of brand new disease will make your head spin, and efforts to do so would be futile.

However, if we go up 10,000 ft and look down at all of these different diseases, we can uncomplicate things and see the forest for the trees.  All of these major diseases can be lumped into one big pile and labeled “Chronic Disease”. Over recent years, it has been recognized that there is something that is omnipresent in all of these chronic diseases.  Inflammation.

Now, you can look at this information in two ways.  You can see inflammation as the culprit, or you can see inflammation as our body’s attempt to heal and normalize.  Just because there’s a fire, and smoke happens to be there every time, doesn’t mean that smoke started the fire.  By the same logic, inflammation happens to be there every time there’s a fire inside of our bodies, but just like smoke, inflammation is an innocent bystander.  Actually, its there to save our lives.  So let’s not victimize ourselves and say that inflammation causes cancer, or heart disease, or rheumatoid, chronic infection, diabetes…etc.  Instead, let’s find out who is starting all of the “chronic disease fires” and causing an absolute pandemic.  Because, if inflammation was actually the culprit, there would be no hope in changing our lifestyles and the only answer would have to be in a prescription of anti-inflammatory pills daily, for the rest of our lives.  No, our bodies are amazingly designed to heal and normalize.  None of us are programmed to be diseased.  We are programmed for health and vitality.

So, what does this mean to us?  We know that chronic disease is going to kill 5/6 Americans this year. That is a statistical fact.  We know that chronic inflammation is eventually going to manifest as cancer… heart disease… diabetes.  Hans Selye, an endocrinologist that has contributed greatly to the understanding of the bodies’ response to continual stressors, observed the body to go through 4 stages.

1. Alarm

2. Stage of resistance AKA attempt to adapt

3. Exhaustion

4. Death

Stage 2 is where many people stand.  Somewhere between health and a diagnosed disease.  The body attempts to adapt by launching an inflammatory attack here, and stays that way until the stressor (unhealthy lifestyle) is removed.  Stage 3 is the stage that unfortunately means the stressor has been there long enough that the body simply cannot keep up and things start to break down.

Amazingly, we’ve seen the body rebound miraculously from stage 4 cancer when the stressor is removed and the body is no longer in a chronic state of inflammation.  But, why wait until it gets to the point when it may be too late?  The time to take action in your health is now… no matter what stage of health we are in.  Maximize your health in 2014 by continually adding health and subtracting the stressors. Live the Maximized Living lifestyle!