Causes of Disease

When people get sick, they usually do so in specific and recurring themes. There is often a predisposition leaning us one way rather than another, based on where our sensitivities lie. As important as it is to look at causal factors of disease, so also is it imperative to take in the bigger picture of who we are, how our lifestyle choices influence our health and may make us more or less susceptible to illness.

Long-time practitioner and teacher of Chinese Medicine, Dr. Ted Kaptchuk, states that “the lines of causality are bent into circles.” Internal and external forces mirror each other; emotions and body structure are linked. Relationships exist within patterns; rather than taking a symptom out of context, we need to look at how it fits into the body and the life in which it appears.

Renowned neurophysiologist Dr. Valerie Hunt has been doing research since the 1940’s on human energy fields. She has found that there is a dynamic field of energy that both surrounds and permeates the entire body. Her research determined that change occurs in the field before any other systems within the physical body change. In other words, disease begins at an energetic level. She writes that “physiological symptoms appear because of the field disturbance. If we correct the disturbance in the field, the symptoms disappear and we have been healed. If we treat the symptoms directly, then when a stressful situation once more aggravates the incoherent energy that is the source of the problem, the disease condition returns.”

One way to explain this paradigm is that disease begins on subtler levels than the physical body, but when subtle signs are ignored or simply not identified, the condition makes its way to the physical body in its search for acknowledgement, appearing as symptoms which we begin to recognize. The physical form is the most substantial manifestation of energy; accordingly, by the time a disease state arrives at that level, it’s in a more solid shape than how it began. Illness can thus be seen as the body’s way of trying to bring our attention to an imbalance somewhere in our life - a life lesson, perhaps.

In Chinese Medicine, there are four categories of causal factors. The first is constitution, the genetic makeup inherited from our parents, both their DNA pool and their lifestyle choices. The second is external environmental ingredients of wind, cold, heat, dampness, dryness, and summer heat. Pathological reactions of the body emulate environmental factors; for example, Wind makes something come up suddenly, and move around in the body.

The third category is emotional factors, internal gauges of our well-being. This is our individual personality, our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Fourth is lifestyle: diet, sexual activity, and physical activity.

These last two aspects, emotions and lifestyle, are about how we conduct our lives. We can’t choose our genetics, but we can choose our attitudes towards work, who we spend time with, what we do for fun, and how we nourish our bodies and souls.

Scientists and spiritual people alike suggest that our deepest sense of dis-ease, and corresponding manifestation of illness, may have a lot to do with whether we align with our reason for being here, and recognize and nurture the unique gifts we have to offer.

Of course, life is really an interaction of all these forces. We do not live in isolation, neither our body parts from one another, nor our hearts from our communities. The greatest health comes not from a perfectly functioning body, but from the happiness of sharing our lives in meaningful ways with others.

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