Disease is an imprecise word that is used to describe a wide range of physical problems, ranging from cancer and influenza to depression and attention deficit disorder. But the intellectual and emotional connotations associated with the word are more dangerous than its lack of specificity is. Disease is a negative term that is laden with a morbid sort of finality, as in, “I’ve got heart disease”; as in end of story. It equivocates illness to a prison sentence with no hope for appeal. This perception of disease has evolved from our conventional medical approach, which is often more focused on pronouncing a diagnosis or naming a disease than on either the individual patient or the underlying physiological causes of the disease.

The Health is Wealth perspective of disease is completely different and is supported by a growing body of medical science. From this perspective, every human being, in his or her natural state of being , is a fully holistic entity operating with optimal functionality. In older medical traditions, it was believed that the body was self-regulating and that disease occurred only when self-regulation was disrupted. In contemporary terms, we call this condition a “feedback loop.” Upon reaching maturity, the human body has everything it needs to maintain its peak function concerning organs, nerves, bones, muscles, and brain cells. It can handle the effects of moderate stress, cleanse toxins from its systems, and, in general, react as necessary to whatever occurs to it. It can perform these functions with incredible ease, provided it receives enough of the three key elements it requires: proper nutrition, proper exercise, and proper rest.

However, when this finely tuned system does not get the fuel, movement, and sleep it has need of, its self- regulating feedback mechanisms become disrupted, and imbalances and disharmony occur. When this happens, we call it “being sick.” Your made to be well, not ill. Health is Wealth does not focus on symptoms, or on the endpoint of a health condition, but instead examines the processes that underlie the appearance of an illness; processes that begin to develop, and then progress, unchecked, over years or decades. Therefore, using the term “disease” to describe physiological afflictions is not explanatory or illustrative. These afflictions are actually dysfunctions of systems that can and will return to optimal function, once they are provided with what they need. Thus, cardiovascular disease is instead cardiovascular dysfunction. Type II Diabetes is blood sugar regulatory dysfunction. Obesity is metabolic dysfunction, etc. Our aim is not only to redefine what disease is, but also to explore the causes of our most serious conditions. As an example of this, medical science has insisted for decades that cardiovascular disease cannot be reversed; has insisted that prevention of further damage is all that can be done. But research such as Dr. Ignarro’s Nobel-winning work on nitric oxide has proven that taking a supplement of the amino acid L-arginine can actually reverse cardiovascular dysfunction. Most of the common assumptions concerning just what it is that makes us ill and what we can do in response are simply wrong.