Theories of Disease Process

Concepts of Stress & Illness and its Implications

Dunn's High Level of Wellness

- Proposed a health-illness continuum

- A continuum is a continuous whole

- Health and Illness are dynamic positions on a continuum

High Level Wellness

- Integrated Functioning of organ systems

- Toward maximizing individual potential

- Achieved only when there is an integration and satisfaction of basic needs

Health

- A dynamic movement toward High level wellness

- "Absence of disease of illness" - old concept

- It is a complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or
infirmity (WHO)

- The state of relative equilibrium of body forms and function (Perkins)

A precursor to Illness

- midpoint of the Health Illness Continuum

- Biological, environment and behavioral stressors

- Risk and vulnerability (factors)

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

- Self-actualization

- Esteem
- Love/Belonging

- Safety

- Physiological

The Epidemiologic Triad

-Agent factors, Host Factors: Intrinsic or Extrinsic, Environmental Factors

Host Factors

- Age, Sex, genetic constitution

- Nutritional status, fitness

- General physical, mental and emotional health

- Absent or abnormal

- Status of hematopoietic system

- Presence of underlying disease

- Patients treated with antimicrobial, corticosteroids, irradiation, or immunosuppressive agents

Theory of Claude Bernard

- A 19th century French Physiologist.

- Viewed the human being as a piece of constancy moving in a world of variables.
- Internal Milieu or environment of the body.
- Postulated that illness was the result of an imbalance in the body’s internal environment.
- He describes disease as an adaptive attempt of the organism to restore its balance.

Theory of Walter Cannon

- An early 20th century

- Coined the term Homeostasis
- “Fight or flight”

Theory of Hans Selye

- More concerned with health than with disease

- Founder of modern Stress Theory
- Adaptive hormones are released during stress

Local Adaptation Syndrome

- A local response to an injury

 - Includes the inflammatory and tissue repair process
- If the injury is severe enough, General Adaptation Syndrome will also be activated

Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome

- How the body responds to stress

- 3 Stages: Alarm, Resistance, and exhaustion

Theory of Harold Wolff

- Interested in the responses of individual both physiologically

- That a person’s total life situation with its sorrows, joys, successes, and frustrations could
profoundly affect his susceptibility to diseases
- Psychosomatic medicine- illness is related to total life patterns

Cybernetic Theory

- Concept of feedback
- Self-regulating system

Pasteur’s Germ Theory

- A specific microorganism is a necessary condition for the development of each infectious

disease.

Multicausal Theory

- Takes into account all possible factors and predisposing conditions can complete the puzzle of
disease causation.

Factors that Cause Disease

- Extrinsic/External causes- agent outside the body of the house

- Animate/Living causes- microorganisms and other people
- Inanimate/non-living causes: Chemical, physical, nutritional, and ecologic
- Intrinsic/Internal: Genetic, physiologic, and physiologic
- Sex
- Age