Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), chemist and microbiologist, put forward the germ theory, according to which diseases are caused by infectious microbes, that impair the functioning and structures of different organ systems. This paradigm is the basis for the use of antibiotics to destroy these invasive microbes and vaccines with low doses of the microbe to challenge the body’s immune defenses and thereby prevent systemic infection.
Pasteur’s contemporary and friend, the physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878), argued instead for the importance of balance in the body’s internal environment ? what he called le milieu int?rieur. ?The constancy of the interior environment is the condition for a free and independent life.? Bernard thought that the body becomes susceptible to infectious agents only if the internal balance ? or homeostasis as we now call it ? is disturbed. After all, there are billions of microbes and bacteria inhabiting our guts, our blood, our whole body. Why do we sometimes sicken from them, sometimes not? When a bacterial or viral agent is ?going around,? as we say, why do some people sicken and others remain healthy ?
Today, Pasteur’s germ theory of disease provides the rationale for the pharmaceutical industry’s billions of dollars research and sales programs for ever more potent anti-bacterial and anti-viral drugs, the use of these antibiotics as a feed-additive in the disease-prone, overcrowded environments of industrial farming ? with the predictable consequence that bacterial evolution is out-stripping the discovery rate of effective antidotes.
The Bernard/Dubos theory that health and resilience is a function of homeostatic balance in the internal environment is reflected in the growing influence of the ancient medical systems of India and China, as well as thefield of functional and integrative medicine.
In all these approaches, the maintenance of health and prevention of disease involves conscious attention given to factors of life-style, environment, nutrition, exercise and recreation, as well as psychological well-being and spiritual practice.
Dr Ronald Grisanti
Integrating function medicine to broaden the chiropractic scope
Where do you stand? Are you still looking for the one drug that is going to “CURE” your disease or do you understand that fixing the internal environment of your sick body just may be the solution all along. Investigate functional medicine. It just may be the answer you have been looking for.
The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Grisanti and his functional medicine community. Dr. Grisanti encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional.
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