MODERN DISEASES
“We are all struggling; none of us has gone far. Let your arrogance go and look around inside.”
(Robert Bly’s reinterpretation of the Sufi poet Kabir)
We live in a world where disease has become something we have to prevent at all cost. To be ill is a curse brought upon ourselves for not heeding the rules of a healthy lifestyle; a sign of biological or psychological weakness. Health has become a tedious obedience. Little wonder that we all try so hard to avoid being ill. Worse, once we have a proven illness, now called a disease, we entirely surrender our well-being to modern technology and outer resources.
Look around inside…
It is obvious that we usually devote as little time as possible to understanding the essence of an illness, and in doing this we actually deny our body its most immediate communication to our conscious world. By renouncing illness, we also forgo a great social and moral mirror to our modern lifestyle. We see our heart attacks as little more than the result of fat molecules in a Big Mac, or the doctor’s inability to produce the right medication. We wait impatiently with our depression and autism for a wonder cure, and devour every morsel of fresh research into yet another toxic substance that we could remove from our pristinely ordered lives.
Modern-day diseases are directly connected to this inability to respect the inner adaptation processes of our biological system. The fragmented pieces of outer information that we use to define and manage modern illness overlook all the integrating symbolic structures, which maintain coherent biological adaptation. In other words, we steer clear of the real reasons for our heart attacks, diabetes, depression, suicidal impulses, and fatigue and prefer to handle our system with obsessive ‘wants’ and taboos. While modern affluent society presents us with the safest world since the beginning of humanity, we are relentlessly driven towards destroying ourselves from the inside.
Defend or deny…
Medication and lifestyle adjustment will often fail if not supported by a conscious coherent image of our inner adaptation strategies. We need to find a way to identify the inner and outer abuses that our system warns about when it makes us ill. At MOMO-health, we simplify the complex network of adaptation to a modern lifestyle by using an integrated model based upon one spectrum of neuro-immune adaptation. The two opposing endpoint conditions are chronic fatigue syndrome and metabolic syndrome (with atherosclerosis, diabetes and high blood pressure). Although few people have either of these syndromes in a pure form, it is common for patients to present a pattern that resembles one more closely than the other.
On the symbolic ‘left side‘ of the spectrum, we place those patients whom we call the ‘perfectors’. People who are primarily motivated by an inner need for perfectionism often force their body to adapt to the multifaceted outer world with such flexibility that they sacrifice their own stability. This threatens the body’s inner identity to such an extent that the immune system passionately defends against the slightest interchange between inside and outside. The result is a body wrought with unstable, excessive immune and hormonal responses, wasting so much energy in the inner world that sufferers become incapable of interacting with the outer world. Allergies, autism, autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, Parkinson’s disease and certain forms of depression fall in this half of the spectrum.
On the symbolic ‘right side‘ of the spectrum, we see the ‘effectors’. These are people whose system adapts by forbidding or denying all destabilising influences to ensure inner control and emotionally cost-effective outcomes in the outer world. Their system interacts according to selected aspects of their identity, often based upon benchmark outer expectations. Although this guarantees better adjustment to the outer world, it results in a highly discriminating immune system, which adapts via insensitivity to the needs of the inner world and its high energy expenditure. The conditions that relate to this side of the spectrum are, for example, metabolic syndrome (associated with diabetes, heart attacks and high blood pressure), Alzheimer’s disease, hostile depression and alcoholism.
Most modern research and general health advice is geared towards the metabolic syndrome side of the spectrum because of its strong relationship with fatal conditions such as heart attacks and strokes. However, chronic fatigue syndrome and its associated conditions affect productivity in a younger population and are especially important now that we need to create a less toxic outer world for the younger generations.