Are All Diseases Of A Reactionary Nature

[Aedes]

Sorry, I'm on service at the hospital this weekend taking care of a variety of diseases, most of which you'd describe as of a reactionary nature (except for one genetic disease patient) -- so I've been too busy to log on...

Originally Posted by boagie

Genetic history could be said to be the constitution of said individual as well as his ancestors, a recessed gene, not activated, is still a part of the individuals contstitution is it not. I am thinking of Arlo Guthrie he could not be sure he would not come down with huntingtons until he was fifty. At anyrate this is the constitution of a given individual, the orginal source of the genetic mistake or its cause would not be descernable.

Huntington's disease, despite being hereditary (and detectable with genetic screening), actually is more severe in every successive generation. It's caused by genetic repeats of a CAG sequence in the affected gene, and you get more and more CAG repeats with each successive generation of carriers. So these are acquired genetic errors. Interesting, eh?

The above diseases the cause of which are dysregulation of the immune system, either this is genetic or there is a infectional cause is there not?

Or both. Someone can be intrinsically predisposed to having a dysregulated immune system after a particular extrinsic event.

A perfectly healthy individual's immune system does not suddenly turn on itself.

No one is perfectly resistant to all things, though. Look up acute rheumatic fever, which is an autoimmune reaction that happens after strep throat. Advanced genetic techniques are starting to discern if there really are susceptible subpopulations of people, but ARF affects a LOT of perfectly healthy people.

AIDS of course is attributed to a virus is it not.

It is indeed caused by a virus, but there are genetic factors in the host that can modulate the level of virus and the rate of progression of the disease. Look up what happens with AIDS patients who have the CCR5-delta 32 mutation -- some of them become long-term nonprogressors with very long, healthy survival! On the other hand, CCR5 mutations are associated with increased severity in West Nile encephalitis!

Geneology determines the form and constitution, the real assurance of the premise is in the belief that the world is entirely relational. If this is established, the premise does not seem outrageous at all. It in fact could be no other way.

It just depends where you believe that intrinsic ends and extrinsic begins.

[boagie]

Aedes,

No need to apologize the demands upon your time would be much more than my own and even I am not always available, Huntington's, no I did not realize that the odds of getting it creases with each sucessesive carrier, what a terriable reality to have hanging over your head.


I have just discovered my insight is not so new, it has a fairly long history, though it is not the common perspective in Europe and North America. The concept of cause and effect is basically a European way of understanding the world and though useful has some profound limitations, The relational world view or the relational perspective is closer to the reality of our situtation, many variables are both cause and effect and within a functioning complex system it would be difficult to recongnize this linear cause and effect. I have some reading to do now, it is at once a delight and a disappointment discovering that ones insight is old hat.


" It just depends where you believe that intrinsic ends and extrinsic begins.[/quote]

That is it doc, there are no ends to intrinsic and extrinsic, with both the organism and the environment being open systems there is at best a seige and a defense. If indeed the organism was not an open system, there never would have been a need to develop an immune system.

This bussiness of, "rheumatic fever, which is an autoimmune reaction that happens after strep throat." It would seem the immune systems reaction after this strep throat is to be disfunctional, my point would be that any affliction of the constitution is do to some foreign organism, its by products or substance/s, also the constitution can be weakened by the physical needs of the constitution not being met. The mutation of say a virus, is it really any different than the mutations which occur in the world at large to all organisms. With foreign conditons being introduced is not mutation then an adaptive reactionary response? I know most mutations are deadly to the subject organism and few benefit to pass on their genes, but is the process really accidental or is it trial and error, which is the proven methodology of reaction and time tested.




"That which exists will imperatively continue to do so until obliged not to by an outside force." Relational Studies



Relational constructionism - Participatory world views


Relational Studies - Theses


Relational quantum mechanics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Understanding the Relational Worldview in Indian Families



"General Systems Theory, a related modern concept [to holism], says that each variable in any system interacts with the other variables so thoroughly that cause and effect cannot be separated. A simple variable can be both cause and effect. Reality will not be still. And it cannot be taken apart! You cannot understand a cell, a rat, a brain structure, a family, a culture if you isolate it from its context. Relationship is everything."
- Marilyn Ferguson
The Aquarian Conspiracy

[socrato]

I am not a medical professional or a phychiatrist but if you consider a social anxiety disorder for example to be a disease(it is actually classified as one but not everyone looks at it that way) then that person might look at a social situation a lot differently than someone else would. They would see it as a frightening experience. This is because of an overactive amygdala which is a part of the brain that controls emotion. When it is overactive it gets harder for someone to control there emotions. So if you were to consider this disease to be reactionary I would have to say only to a certain extent because they cannot actually always control their emotions as easily someone else could.

[boagie]

Originally Posted by socrato

I am not a medical professional or a phychiatrist but if you consider a social anxiety disorder for example to be a disease(it is actually classified as one but not everyone looks at it that way) then that person might look at a social situation a lot differently than someone else would. They would see it as a frightening experience. This is because of an overactive amygdala which is a part of the brain that controls emotion. When it is overactive it gets harder for someone to control there emotions. So if you were to consider this disease to be reactionary I would have to say only to a certain extent because they cannot actually always control their emotions as easily someone else could.

Socrato,

Well, the intial term is dis-ease, and with an anxiety disorder --really out of my depth here but, I try to understand things of late in a relational way, not knowing the context in which this anxiety disorder manifested itself we are really at a loss. That said assuming that the context, lack of a proper relational foundation perhaps the nervous system as a result gets over sensitized, anxiety I have experienced myself, and I am reasonably sure that its foundation is a sense of inadequacy. Ones own family can do this to one, particularly if they in fact suffer from the same affiction. There is no doubt in my mind however that it is a reaction to ones belief system about ones self, the belief system may have been established by the parents before the subject had the power of reason to defend himself from a negative framework in which he was placed. There is something to which this anxiety, this nervous system reacts to, avoidence of the social situtation and thus avoidence of an anxiety attact might be said to be proof of this. I do not know if this was the least of help, but yes, I would say this is a reactionary disease, in many cases a learned behaviour.

[Aedes]

Psychiatric diseases (which are defined as disease based on their interference in someone's ability to live a reasonably normal life) have biological properties and external influences. But without a doubt there are both genetic and acquired influences on their biology. Psychiatric diseases run in families, even among monozygotic (identical) twins who are raised in different households. But the biological effects, like neurotransmitter levels and functional brain imaging studies, clearly show that the biology changes in response to experience. That's why intensive therapy for depression produces the same biological end-effect on the brain as do pharmacological antidepressants.

[boagie]

Aedes,

Interesting, anything that is said to effect a response reaction to ones biology could be thought of as an experience, even drug therapy, taken a step further it could also be considered the introduction of new information could it not? I don't know where I going with this. Just curious what kind of experiences could be introduced to someone seriously depressed that would change their chemistry and thus change their outlook on life?

[socrato]

Could cognitive behavioural therapy actually help to treat deppression and social anxiety disorder

[socrato]

Where are all of the psychiatrists here this should be a hot topic. The question the boagie had.

[Holiday20310401]

Originally Posted by Aedes

But the biological effects, like neurotransmitter levels and functional brain imaging studies, clearly show that the biology changes in response to experience.

This is useful to know. Is experience more of an effect to the biology as the life progresses or due to memory failing would it lack? What percentage would you give the overall effect the original genetic material has?

[socrato]

I suppose in a sense genes have to adapt in order for us to adapt to change otherwise it becomes harder for us to control our emotions