Health is defined in terms of states of cell function. We now also understand that sickness is validly defined as unsustaniable adaptive cell function. The reason cells enter a state of adaptation, a state of unhealthy cell function, is due to exposure to environmental or lifestyle stressors. Hans Selye,a very famous Canadian researcher was one of the pioneering reserachers regarding cell function, health and illness effects of chronic exposure to stressors. What he discovered was that our body responds to any stressor in the same way. The first stage is alarm or fight or flight. The next stage is adaptation and the last stage is fatigue. When the exposure to stressor is chronic, the cells andéor entire organism expend so much energry dealing with stressor that they become weak and unable to deal with anyother challanges. The last stage is death. When the organism exhausts all the resources, it fails and dies. This is a very accurate description of the stages of chronic illness. Chronic illness is the result of chronic stressors.

The Rock in our Backpack Stressor Analogy

Imagine you are born into a swimming pool wearing water wings and a backpack. Water wings are those little inflatable bands you wear around your arms to keep you afloat. Now imagine yourself in a swimming pool with water wings around your arms and backpack on. It is accepted that genetically human life span is around 120 years. In this analogy, you can think of being born into a swimming pool with a backpack on, with water wings on, and those water wings have a slow leak. This slow leak means that air will run out of those water wings in about 120 years. If you are born into that pool, and there is no chronic stressors, you are just going to happily float around in there for 120 years. In this analogy, any stressors in life reprsent the rocks in your backpack. When you get a rock in your backpack, you sink a little lower in the water and the rate of air leakage in the water wings increases. What does this do to your rate of aging? it increases it. The other thing that happens, because you have got that rock or that stress load in your backpack weighing you down, day to day life becomes a little bit more of a struggle. You have to work harder to keep you head above water.

It does not matter what drug or surgery you get when you have that rock in your backpack or that stressor in your life. The only thing that matters is getting rid of that stressor in your life. Take control of what rocks go in and what rocks you are going to take out and understand that treating only the effects of those rocks such as changes in blood pressure or changes in cholestrol, will never address the cause of the issue and never return you to state of balance and health.