Disease and Illness

I recently read an excellent post by Tony Ingram who is a fellow Physical Therapist that this post was generated from.  I would encourage you to go to his site and read his post, Disease vs. Illness.

“Disease, then, is something an organ has; illness is something a man has.” - Eric J. Cassell, 1978

Disease and injury are things we all experience at different times and in different forms, they are apart of a normal consequence of life as we move through this world we live in. How that disease or injury affects us is sometimes part of the illness we experience. Let’s look at the difference between the two to help clarify how we cope and return to a more normal way of life after they occur and two important take home points.

Disease or injury is an abnormal condition affecting an organism. You get a virus, cancer, break a bone, twist your ankle, etc. Fortunately with the advancements of medical science and use of our immune system most diseases are treatable and often with complete healing. Likewise most injuries will heal themselves. We are wonderfully equipped to heal our tissues whether a broken bone, sprained ligament, pulled muscle or others through our immune system and our bodies healing mechanisms.

Illness is the feelings that most often go along with the disease or injury; such as pain, weakness, discomfort, distress, fatigue, dysfunction, etc. These feelings can be significantly affected by non-disease factors for example: beliefs, expectations, fears, and anxiety to name a few.

Most often a disease or injury will cause illness to follow and typically the feelings of illness will decrease as part of the recovery process as the disease or injury heals. But, and this can be a big but, they can each occur on their own.

For example you can have a disease and feel no illness. Many people walk around with high blood pressure and are unaware of it till a stroke or heart attack makes them aware of it. Others may have a cancer that is not detected early on. Take home point number one, is why regular physician visits and screenings are so important to help detect a disease that might be present even though you are not experiencing any illness.

The other end of spectrum can also happen when someone has illness, but no disease or injury has occurred often referred to as Somatoform Disorder. This does not mean that person is faking it; it is part of a complex psychological process with some sort of neurological or neuro-immune disorder in play that we don’t fully understand yet.

But lastly I want to point to the fact that illness can affect disease. The extra stress, anxiety and fear that we allow from the illness can increase our body’s production of hormones and sensitization of our nervous system that actually make the disease or injury worse or slows the healing process. This in turn can lead to greater feeling of illness and a horrible illness/disease cycle has begun. Take home point number two, is the importance of using relaxation techniques and other stress reducing skills (understanding the disease and injury process to reduce fear and clarify beliefs and expectations) can actually help you recover faster and improve your healing from an injury or disease process to break you out of the illness/disease cycle.