Relativity of Health

[Guest guest]

I am including some of the information from the indicated website,

as the tables of reference are not easily configured to this format.

It is primarily this paragraph that held my interest:

Even in those diseases associated with the introduction into

the patient of a unique system of foreign " information " (51), such

as microorganisms, viruses, or antigens, the evolution of

the resulting disease follows a gradual movement along a continuum

of values representing the balance between the load of

dose or virulence of the foreign system introduced and the capacity

of those body processes which neutralize or inhibit such

loads.

The significance of disease as a continuum is that precursor

states of disease are necessarily present in a process before the

clinical onset of disease. Increasingly sensitive

diagnostic techniques may be able to detect these precursor states

and may assist greatly in providing earlier and more

opportune therapy or even prevention.

I believe the premise of this informaiton to be this:

That in order for disease to take hold, there must be a pre-disease

state that allows such. A tendency you might say. That disease is a

process and doesn't happen overnight. Therefore it is impearative

that tests are accomplished to determine this predisposition for

certain diseases. If we wait until the disease has already set in,

we are too late.

I've been in the medical system over six years now and I can say

without a second thought, that there is no rush in the medical

world to determine my pre-disease state. I can't even get doctors to

give me a post disease decision or diagnosis.

I've consistently and steadily made doctor appointment after doctor

appointment. Nothing has hindered my focus as I have complied with

each and every protocol with haste.Again and again, doctors would

continue to start from square one, claiming some tainting of either

record or specimen , or tests. Someone here once told a truthful

tale. How in the beginning the doctors all claimed , " Why do you

think you have this illness....not believing you were diseased.

After tests confirmed the disease state, the doctors

claimed, " Where did you ever get this illness " making you rethink

all the public restrooms you ever visited. And years later , doctors

still in denial will claim, " Why did you let this go on unaddressed

for so long. " . Never at any point taking responsibility for

appropriate health care as their position demands, constantly

reminding the patient that in the end, they are not only a number,

but alone as well.. Doctors will readily tell you, " Your health is

not as important to us doctors as it is to you. My how comforting.

What I have gathered from this website as listed here:

http://www.euchromatin.org/systems7.htm#Continuum

Is simply that diseases don't just jump on us out of nowhere. They

evolve within us, only progressing in body systems willing to

promote the disease process. All in all this takes time and it is

time well spent by the parties involved to try and stop the

progressive decent of our abilities.

But alas, this is not what the medical world thinks they should

concentrate on. Over and over,time and again, I've been told that

there is no protocol or treatment for a failing body system, just

for a " failed " body system. Medicine will not acknowledge that it

has a part in prevention, only in hindsight does it want to be

called upon. And even then, they just want to chant in that pre-

school manner..... Na-na-na-na-na-na......you are sick.... and it is

all your fault "

I can see the merit in this information. We must somehow get the

doctors and others in medicine to take it to heart. Before we can

ever make headway in finding tests to determine our predisposition

and load factor for certain disease processes, we must enlist the

cooperation from the medical community as a preventative measures

contributor and not just a " pharmaceutical dispensing station "

Peg April 2005

Published in: ls of Internal Medicine, vol. 57, no. 5, pp. 788-

794 (November, 1962):

" Load Tolerance as a Quantitative Estimate of Health "

H. Frenster, M.D.

Department of Growth Physiology, Walter Army Institute of

Research,

Washington, D.C.

The steady development of increasingly sensitive techniques for the

study of human structure and function has created new opportunities

and new dilemmas in the diagnosis of disease (1).

Disease may now be studied earlier in its course (2), or it may even

be predicted before its onset (3). Objective evidence of the

efficacy of therapy can be obtained by appropriate studies before

and after treatment (4). The prospect exists of determining not only

the presence, but also the magnitude of disease in a given subject

(5). However, as techniques become more sensitive and disease is

detected earlier, or if disease is of a lesser magnitude, the

distinction between health and disease gradually becomes less well

defined (1). This dilemma also creates the opportunity for a fuller

understanding of the relation between health and disease.

Tolerance Tests

Minimally diseased processes can be induced to reveal their

abnormality by application of increased loads or resistances to the

action of the process. Such load-output studies are the basis of the

wide variety of tolerance tests in clinical use today

Thus, administration of a glucose load and of cortisone resistance

to the utilization of glucose can reveal early or minimal diabetes

that is not evident under basal conditions (3). Similarly,

application of increased venous inflow loads or of aortic outflow

resistances can reveal hemodynamic evidence of cardiac failure which

is not obvious under basal conditions (7).

As the glucose load or cortisone dosage is progressively increased,

an increasing percentage of subjects tested will respond with

abnormal glucose utilization, manifested as significant

hyperglycemia (16, 17). Similarly, as venous inflow load or aortic

outflow resistance is progressively increased, a greater percentage

of subjects will demonstrate hemodynamic signs of cardiac failure,

manifested as significant elevation of end-diastolic pressure (7).

Thus, whereas patients with frank diabetes mellitus display

significant hyperglycemia under basal conditions, and patients with

minimal diabetes do so after a test load of 100 grams of glucose

orally, patients with latent diabetes may not show significant

hyperglycemia until after both glucose loading and pre-treatment

with cortisone; healthy subjects may be resistant to even larger

amounts of both glucose and cortisone (5). The ease with which

significant hyperglycemia occurs under test conditions is a rough

quantitative estimate of the severity of the diabetes.

A process being tested thus will fail to act upon all of the test

load in a growing proportion of subjects tested, as the size of the

test load and resistance applied is progressively increased.

Relativity of Health

The unit of body physiology may be considered to be the body

process. A process produces a transformation in some quantity of

mass, energy, or information supplied to the process as input load

and leaving the process as output (18). The body process is opposed

in its action by various resistances, both internal and external to

the process. The maximal rate of action of the process at any time

is designated as the available capacity of the process, which acts

upon the input load while overcoming the resistances to output

The output of a body process is determined by the functional

interaction of the available capacity of the process with the inflow

load and outflow resistances (18) (Table 2). Process output is equal

to that fraction of the imposed input load that is successfully

acted upon by the process. Signals to the capacity from either the

input load, the output, or from both input and output mediate self-

regulation within the process (Table 2).

When input load and opposing resistances exceed available capacity,

the process fails to act upon all of the input presented to the

process.

The magnitude of such additional tolerated loads is a quantitative

measure of the tolerance or health of the process (18).

Tolerance or failure of a body process is thus determined by the

balance between process capacity and its applied loads and

resistances. The balance can indicate process failure at either low

or high levels of process output and performance (48). The state of

health or disease within any body process is thus independent of any

absolute value of body process output and is determined, rather, in

a relative way, reflecting the balance of capacity with load and

resistance.

The initiation of a relativist phase of clinical physiology has been

predicted for a long time (49), but has occurred only recently (48,

50).

Continuum of Disease

As the load and resistance applied to a process are progressively

increased, or as process capacity is progressively decreased, a

gradual decrease in tolerance for additional loads results.

Eventually a transition from tolerance to failure in acting upon

existing loads occurs, followed by a gradual increase in failure

(7). The decrease in process health and the gradual increase in

process disease is thus a gradual movement along a continuum of

values representing the changing balance between process capacity

and applied loads and resistances; it is not a sudden discrete jump

from one distinct value of health to another of disease (1). The

evolution of acquired disease thus follows a continuous progressive

course rather than a discontinuous quantal series within body

processes.

Even in those diseases associated with the introduction into the

patient of a unique system of foreign " information " (51), such as

microorganisms, viruses, or antigens, the evolution of the resulting

disease follows a gradual movement along a continuum of values

representing the balance between the load of dose or virulence of

the foreign system introduced and the capacity of those body

processes which neutralize or inhibit such loads.

The significance of disease as a continuum is that precursor states

of disease are necessarily present in a process before the clinical

onset of disease. Increasingly sensitive diagnostic techniques may

be able to detect these precursor states and may assist greatly in

providing earlier and more opportune therapy or even prevention.

Measurement of Health

A definition of health, while acknowledging the contrast with

disease (52, 53), should be expressed in terms independent of

disease. The concept of health as a tolerance for additional loads

seems to provide such terms; it has the further advantage of being

capable of quantitation.

The measurement of load tolerance in a given process is based upon

an analysis of the changes in process output that follow from a

measured increase in input load or resistance to capacity (54).

Generally, resistance to capacity is more difficult to quantitate

than input load. As a consequence, the usual technique in clinical

tolerance testing has been to apply a standard or increasing input

load to the process in question (5) (Table 1). The stigmata of

failure in tolerance tests are identical to those determined

previously for body processes in the basal state (Table 3), and they

are values which are statistically significant in comparison with

normal body proceses. Increases in input load to the point of

process failure are not required, except when determining maximal

tolerance. Load tolerance has been estimated in many body processes

(Table 4), and its quantitation seems to be possible in additional

processes

Conclusion

The quantitation of health promises to yield valuable data on the

earliest onset of disease, on the variability of healthy

individuals, and on the efficacy of prophylactic measures before the

clinical onset of disease. The concept of load tolerance, derived

from the throughput-interaction model of body processes (Table 2),

suggests that biological systems may be studied in ways analogous to

those used in other disciplines (64) for the examination of behavior

varying with time.

See this article in its entire form

http://www.euchromatin.org/systems7.htm

http://www.euchromatin.org/systems9.htm

http://www.euchromatin.org/systems4.htm

Please understand that I am currently " couch confined " which is a

cuter term than " bedridden " , thus I am posting this on a song and a

prayer that I've not make some unforgivable error Peg