A deep thought on health and medical science...

Yesterday I mentioned a book I was reading on Family Systems Theory (Family Evaluation, by Michael Kerr and Murray Bowen). I came across another line in that book that got me thinking, so I thought I would pass it along and you think about it as well.

After making a case for Family Systems Theory in explaining psychological conditions, they go on to indicate that just maybe we could use the theory to explain physiological abnormalities as well. Here is something to think about:

…thinking of the body as an emotional system may enhance our understanding of a clinical problem such as cancer. If the body can be conceptualized accurately as an emotional system, then cancer may reflect some sort of disturbance in the balance of that system. This way of thinking about cancer is quite different from the way of thinking upon which most cancer research has been based. Research on finding the cause of cancer has tended to focus on what is occurring inside the cancer cell. The research question has generally been, “What has gone wrong with this cell to cause it to behave abnormally?” Research based on the assumption that cancer is caused
by a defect or disturbance within the cell may eventually provide an adequate explanation. On the other hand, an adequate explanation may possibly depend on being able to conceptualize the body as a biological unit, for example, as a colony of cells. Cancer would reflect a disturbance in the unit as a whole. The disturbance observed within the cell would be a reflection of a disturbance in the larger system of which the cancer-containing organ is part.

I know this passage is a little deep, but what do you think? It kind of makes sense to me. Perhaps cancer isn’t caused by something that goes wrong inside the cell, perhaps it’s caused by the cells reaction to something occurring elsewhere in the body. We already know of some things that increase the chances of cancer – exposure to sun, improper nutrition, there are several examples.

If this is ever proven to be true, and we can identify those things that cause the abnormalities in cells, we could prevent cancer forever! And I suspect that heart disease and diabetes could be right behind. There is a thought!

I don’t know much about this, but it seems to make sense to me. I know that God has created us in a marvelous way – and I suspect that the illnesses we suffer from are probably caused by something we’re doing. Maybe I gave you something to think about!