Preventing Every Disease and Injury with 2 things!

Every problem within the body can be simplified down into two primary causes, either something is being overloaded or something has a decreased capacity or ability to complete its job, and most of the time it is a combination of both. There is much more complexity involved within these two occurrences, however in understanding that principle we can determine the best way to fix or avoid health concerns.

Our body is very well designed and can handle just about anything that challenges it throughout the day. If however there is more load than it can handle or the load it can handle is decreased due to lifestyle choices, then injuries or disease occur.
Let me explain with this example: Cardiovascular disease and the heart attack. The capacity of the heart is diminished when the heart muscle’s own blood supply is decreased (coronary arteries are clogged) in this case the heart has a decreased ability to do work. We then have a stressful moment or demand more from the heart by increased activity like shoveling the walk or walking upstairs. At that moment the heart is overloaded compared to its decreased capacity to do the work and a heart attack happens.

In this case understanding the load and capacity is key to preventing or treating such a problem. If the decreased capacity was brought on by clogged arteries and weakened heart muscle, then the answer to prevention is simply to strengthen the heart with aerobic activity and reduce the amount of “clogging” activities such as diets high in trans fat and sugar which the liver inevitably turns into cholesterol. There are obviously more factors involved here, but all those can be directly related to how we can either increase the capacity or decrease the load, it really does come down to that.
Here are some other simplified examples for you:

Torn ACL:
• Capacity: weak muscles that control the forces put on the knee, such as Gluteus Medius and Hamstrings, not enough omega 3’s in diet (affects tissue strength at a cellular level) weak ligament from inactivity (weekend warrior syndrome)
• Load: pivoting to catch that football at the annual Turkey Bowl, planting all the body weight on the outside leg and rotating to run for the goal while your uncoordinated cousin trips 2 feet to your side while attempting to block for you and instead comes down with an outside force on your knee…recipe for disaster. In this case a well conditioned NFL athlete may have been able to handle that force, but the office dweller with a pound of cheese ball already in the stomach has a little less capacity, thus he enjoys his turkey dinner from the emergency room bed waiting for the MRI results!

Low Back Pain:
• Capacity: weak back and core muscles from poor posture and excessive work hours at the computer and “not having any time to exercise”. Degenerating discs from joint misalignment, previously mentioned inactivity, and a bad 15 year old mattress that leaves a you shaped indent better than your last snow angel! (we won’t even talk about the pillow)
• Load: Bending over to pick up that pencil is sometimes all the force needed to overload a severely diminished capacity. Other sample loads being a not so well formed back swing to slice your last range ball into the rough (you didn’t use your purchased ball because you had a bad feeling about this tee off … the back 9 at Cascade is always humbling), or playing He-Man and showing your wife you could lift that box and you didn’t care how heavy or how ugly the form was just as long as you save face and lifted it up… need I continue with the overloads?
Most of the time the load is increased on a certain thing because it is making up for other structures not moving or doing their job.

Cold/Flu:
• Capacity: increase immune system by managing stress, good sleep habits, and nutrition.
• Load: reduce amount of bacteria and virus exposure by good hygiene and proper hand washing.

Cancer:
• Capacity: increase body’s method of fighting off cancerous changes through proper diet, exercise and maximize antioxidant intake.
• Load: avoid harmful behaviors like smoking (lung cancer), extended sun exposure (skin cancers), diets high in fat and low in fiber (colon cancer), and minimize food preservatives (linked to almost all cancers). Note that most all cancers are highly avoidable diseases through good lifestyle choices.

Cardiovascular Disease/Heart attack:
• Capacity: Weak heart muscle from inactivity and low blood flow to the heart from clogged coronary arteries.
• Load: shoveling the walk that your son promised he would do when he got back from using your car last week, and thus increasing oxygen demand that the heart just can’t deliver this time. Jumping up and cheering during OT after sitting for a 4 hour BYU vs Utah game and increasing that demand on the heart beyond its capacity to work… fortunately you were in the ambulance and did not hear the lack of self control by one of the best performing quarterbacks BYU has ever seen, but can’t seem to keep his mouth in check after a win… that may certainly have finished what your heart attack started.

Bruised Thumb:
• Capacity: increase your hand to eye coordination
• Load: heavy Metal object striking thumb instead of intended nail. Best way to control the force…don’t hit your thumb with the hammer! Sometimes the force is greater than the tissue can handle even at its healthiest capacity …Can you see what I am getting at though?

Everything in prevention comes down to controlling these two factors. The better you are at understanding this, the easier the choices become and the healthier you will be!

As a bit of a side note here, what do you do if the injury has already happened? Treating patient’s then comes down to the Physician’s ability to know “what was overloaded?” and “how do we increase its capacity now?” If we can answer that, we then can do specific things to allow it to heal and increase its ability to deal with loads in the future. Following this will produce great results fixing the problems and limit wasted time treating things that aren’t the problem.

Load vs. Capacity