The Six Stages of Disease
According to Ayurveda there are 6 stages in which a disease will progress before becoming chronic and/or severe. Looking at the pathology and progression of the disease is one of the most effective ways to figure out the root cause and how to best treat it. Understanding these phases is also helpful in preventing illness’ from occurring in the first place.
Accumulation: This starts with having too much of something that isn’t in alignment with your bodies needs. Common examples are poor diet or not eating for your body type, having imbalanced digestion, poor lifestyle habits like excessive smoking, alcohol or caffeine intake, lack of/too much exercise, exposure to environmental toxins through water or air, and stress.
Aggravation: When the accumulation hasn't been halted in the first stage it will start to aggravate the affected system and symptoms will worsen. Often this is happening within the digestive system, nervous system, lymphatic system, or with our hormones.
Overflow: The imbalance or aggravation in the affected system starts to spread.
Relocation: This is the stage where the imbalance begin to settle into another area - usually in the weakest or most vulnerable parts of the body and places where we may be genetically prone to disease.
Manifestation: After the imbalance has settled into its new location and starts to act upon that location is when specific symptoms are experienced and this is when a disease can be characterized and given its diagnosis.
Complication: When the imbalance becomes chronic and severe.
Consider the following scenario as an example of this: A 45y/o woman complains to her doctor that she feels exhausted and her hair is starting to thin. It seems like a sudden onset because she has spent years having enough energy to handle working at a busy office, caring for her family, and has been able to function well off of 5 hours of sleep for most of her life. She has had chronic digestive issues for 20+ years but didn’t think it was something to be concerned about. The doctor does a physical exam and runs some standard blood tests and doesn’t find anything wrong. She is assured that she is fine, that her symptoms are due to aging, and that she can come back in 6 months. A year later the woman is diagnosed with systemic Lupus.
This is a common experience in conventional medicine - the disease won’t be diagnosed until the symptoms have progressed and become chronic or severe. By the time the findings are diagnosed as a disease it’s too late for prevention. The advantage of taking a holistic approach is to identify imbalances in their earliest stage so that they don’t manifest into disease.
It is easy to ignore the “check oil” lights (ex. constipation, reflux, painful periods)our bodies gives us over the years but it will prevent the big “check engine” lights (ex. cancer, heart disease, type II diabetes) from going off later on.
Once a disease has manifested this doesn’t mean it can’t be reversed but the individual will need to do extra repair work to fix the issue and a combination of allopathic and holistic treatments may be needed for best results.
Ayurveda says that for every year a person has been out of balance it will take 2 months to get them back into balance. Of course, this is not exactly true in every situation, but I have found it to be a good general guideline of what to expect in regards to fully healing something. The woman described above had been doing way too much every day, for everyone else, all while ignoring the subtle cues that her body was imbalanced for 20+ years so she would need to expect to spend about 3+ years reversing this disease. That can feel overwhelming but healing is a slow and steady progress - so while she might not completely reverse Lupus quickly, within the first 3-6 months of addressing the root cause of why this all started, she would start to notice significant improvements.
I hope this information helps you to understand the pathology of dis-ease and what you can do now to prevent issues from becoming chronic and severe. The fun thing about doing this work is that it opens to door to understanding what feels good and in alignment with our bodies needs.