Beginning “The Curse of No Symptoms,” Christian Wernstedt writes:
A frequent misunderstanding in the world of health is that having no symptoms equals health. This is not so. Symptoms are often the last thing to happen when the is suffering from malfunction. Being symptom free can be a curse, because there are no warning signs until something dramatic happens. [Editor's note. I whipped this up quickly so I'm sorry for grammar/spelling errors.]
After discussing, with technical exhibits/measurements, some systemic failures of an individual’s body functioning, Christian says:
He knows that the process will take time, probably years. Repairing tissue and re-growing bone takes time, but he is also certain of a couple of big picture ideas about health and aging:
- What people call “aging” is often not aging at all. It is the resulting degeneration that comes from chronic exposure to things like food sensitivity, infections, and toxicity which gradually erode the health of the body.
- Being free of symptoms, whether it is because of symptom suppressing medications or because of one’s body, for one reason or another, not producing noticeable symptoms (yet), is a dangerous proposition. (Who knows, if the H Pylori and digestive issues hadn’t been discovered, our guy might suffer a “sudden” fracture a couple of decades in the future, or his teeth might begin to fall out of his mouth, or he might develop cancer because of a lack of proper nutrition.) [Editor's note: On the last point, read up on Bruce Ames' triage theory of aging.]
Bottom line: Disease prevention and functional investigation of one’s body should ideally start long before one ever experiences symptoms.
This is the way health should be dealt with. Another win for Aristotle and Hippocrates over Plato.