We often see statements, statistics, and articles about causes and risk factors of illness and disease. What’s the difference between a cause of illness and a disease risk factor?  When we study cures the difference becomes clear and dramatic.

Every Illness has a Present Cause – The Healthicine Creed

An illness-cause causes an illness. An element of illness, an illness-element, is defined by having a single present cause. An illness-cause, when addressed, leads to a cure of that illness element. Addressing the present cause cures the illness element. A compound illness has multiple present causes – and requires multiple cures.

There are present causes, past causes, and future causes. An illness-cause is present. Addressing past causes and future causes might prevent future illnesses, but can only cure when they are also a present cause. Past causes and future causes are risk-factors, speculations, because no illness is present.

An illness only exists when  the illness-cause is present.

Risk Factor:

Risk factors are everywhere. They can and do exist without causing illness. The opposite of a risk factor is often another risk factor. A risk factor increases the statistical risk of disease. When a risk factor is addressed, the statistical risk of disease is reduced, some illnesses might be prevented, but few, if any, are cured.

Illness or Disease?

Did you notice that causes are linked to illnesses while risk factors are linked to diseases.  What’s the difference? Why is there a difference?

“A patient goes to the doctor with an illness, and goes home with a disease.” Unknown

An illness is a specific case. An illness is what a patient has when they are ill. Only some illnesses are diagnosed as cases of disease. Some illnesses cannot be diagnosed as diseases, because they don’t match any known diagnosis. Many illnesses are never diagnosed as a disease – because we don’t bother going to a doctor.  Many are cured by health before we go to a doctor.

A disease is a general class of illnesses with similar signs and symptoms, a name, a diagnostic protocol, a prognosis and a treatment recommendation. When we say that someone “has a disease“, they have a case of illness that has been diagnosed as a case of disease. Every individual case of a disease is a unique illness or set of illnesses.

Causes are Curative

An illness’s present cause is an essential part of an illness element. Addressing the present cause cures the illness element. Addressing the present cause stops the illness element from existing, from progressing. It does not necessarily cure the consequences of the illness – those may require additional cures.

Three: Types of Causes, Types of Illness, Types of Cures

There are three basic elements of illnesses, categorized by type of cause, requiring  three different types of cures.

Process cause: the presence, absence, deficiency, or excess of a process can cause illness. A process caused illness, a causal illness, is cured by addressing the process cause, and if necessary addressing the negative consequences. The illness stops when the present process cause is addressed, producing a process cure.  Secondary cures may be necessary to address complex or compound illnesses. A process cause might be in the diet, the body, the mind, the spirit, the community, or the environment of the patient.

Scurvy: caused by a faulty dietary process is cured by an appropriate dietary change. Healing damage caused by scurvy – the second cure – takes time and is aided by supplemental Vitamin C.

Attribute cause: the presence, absence, deficiency, or excess of an attribute that is causing an illness. Attribute illnesses are cured by transformation – by transforming the causal attribute to a new state or status. The attribute illness ends when the attribute cause has been addressed. It might also be necessary to address the negative consequences of a complex or compound illness with additional cures. The illness attribute can be an attribute of diet, body, mind, spirit, community or environment of the patient.

Depression: caused by loss of a job can be cured when a new job is found. The new job might cause some discomfort or pain, which might require some additional adjustments, or it might be a better job, leading rapidly to increased satisfaction and health

Injury cause: a force causes an injury. The past cause of an injury is no longer present. The injury is the present cause of discomfort and pain. Injuries are cured by healing.  Healing is a type of transformation, although not every transformation is a type of healing. An injury might occur to the body, the mind, the spirit, the community, of the patient.

Example: Tripping and falling might cause a sprained ankle or even a broken leg. Healing takes time and proceeds naturally regardless of cause. Note: Injuries can also be caused by illness – but that’s another layer, not discussed in this post.

1. Chronic Cause: Any of the three elementary causes of illness can be chronic, creating a chronic illness. Malnutrition can be caused by chronic starvation or chronic overeating, leading to loss of weight, or obesity. Attribute illnesses are usually chronic by nature – because attributes are things that persist over time. Chronic injuries have a persistent, or chronic process, attribute, or force causes. The cause of a chronic illness is in the past and in the present.

The Cure Proves the Cause

When we address a cause and the illness is cured the cure proves the cause. We might be wrong sometimes, but a cure is the best proof.   There are many ways to successfully address any cause.

Risk Factors are Statistical

Proof of risk factors is statistical. Proof of cures can be statistical only when individuals cures and cure failures are counted.

Healthiness

All cures can be viewed as improvements in healthiness. Process cures, transformational cures, and healing cures work faster and function better when the patient is healthier, slower and not so well when the patient is less healthy. Few cures are perfect – improving healthiness improves cures. As healthiness drops, we become more vulnerable to illness – a lesser cause might result in illness. As healthiness rises, we are less vulnerable to illness, able to tolerate stronger causes without illness.

Successful cures and successfully addressing risk factors can both improve healthiness. Unsuccessful cures can decrease healthiness. However, addressing risk factors is “risky”. Risk factors are often balances – and balancing is healthy. Preventing one risk factor can easily lead to an increase in another risk factor.

Risk Factors are Preventative

Addressing risk factors of a disease statistically prevents cases of disease, a class of illnesses, from occurring.  Addressing risk factors is statistical – it does not cure any disease and does not absolutely prevent any case of disease from occurring. It provides a statistical prevention, such that we believe some illnesses were prevented, based on statistics, not proof.  Preventative actions are always statistical. We can never be certain that a preventative action prevented a specific case of an illness.

We visualize some differences between causes and risk factors in this table.

Risk Factors to Causes

Before the illness exists, a potential cause is a risk factor. Risk factors are commonplace and rarely cause illness. For example, overeating doesn’t cause obesity until it has occurred consistently over a very long time period. Few, if any cancers are caused by overeating, but overeating is a risk factor for cancer. Tripping might cause an injury – a sprain or even a broken leg, but we can trip many times without injury. We might lose or quit many jobs without causing any depression.

Risk factors should not be confused with causes. A risk factor might eventually cause an illness, but when it does – it is no longer a risk factor, it’s the cause. A cause might be seen as a risk of producing other diseases, but a cause is 100 percent the cause of an illness element, or not the cause of the illness element. A cause is real, not a statistic. What if an illness has TWO causes? An element of illness has a single cause, by definition. Any illness that truly has two causes, consists of two illness elements and requires two cure actions, two cures.

An illness cause produces an illness. A cure proves the cause. Once the cause is addressed, the illness has been cured. Each cure is a single case, with many unique factors. Every cure is a unique story, an anecdote, not a statistic. Of course, every story might be fact or fiction – but a cure is a cure.

It’s possible to gather a number of cure claims together for statistical analysis. As cure claims become statistical, some variables disappear, making the information less valuable in some ways, and more valuable in other ways. Specifically, it becomes more valuable to prevent illness, as  it becomes less reliable for curing.

Increases in risk factors increase the chances of illness. Statistical analysis validates risk factors in general. Cures prove causes. Each risk factor proof is a statistic and when risk factor analysis is applied to a single case, it might simply be wrong. Walking is a risk factor for tripping, a risk factor for sprained ankles and broken bones, but walking is healthy in most cases.

When we look more closely at causes, we can see other differences between risk factors and causes.

Causes – Causal Chains

“This world and yonder world are incessantly giving birth: Every cause is a mother, its
effect the child. When the effect is born, it too becomes a cause and gives birth to
wondrous effects. These causes are generation on generation, but it needs a very well
lighted eye to see the links in their chain.” – RUMI

Rumi, the famous Persian poet, was not speaking just about illness, but his quote applies perfectly to illness. Every case of illness has a cause and consequences. Every cause has a  cause. Every cause of a cause has a cause.  And every set of consequences causes other consequences. Life is a chain of causes and consequences – positive and negative.

It is very useful to view causes of illness as links in a chain. However, we need to separate present causes from past and future causes. We can only cure by addressing a present cause.  When we look closely, every present cause is part of a chain of present causes, of which only some lead to a cure.

Scurvy is caused by a deficiency of Vitamin C, which is caused by a dietary deficiency, which might be caused by ignorance, addiction, or by a ship’s cook or owner. Addressing the deficiency directly with a supplement does not cure – the illness returns when the supplement is discontinued. But, education, or healing the addiction, or changing the cook or the employer can cure.

A causal chain pulls us towards illness, as in this diagram. 

For any single element of causal or process illness element, breaking a link in the causal chain usually breaks the chain and cures the illness. This might be difficult to comprehend without an example where the chain is long, but the links are clear.

Suppose someone has scurvy.  Scurvy is caused by a deficiency of Vitamin C. That’s the final cause, cause 5 in the image above.  They have a deficiency of Vitamin C because their diet is deficient in Vitamin C.  That’s cause #4.  In this case, the scurvy might be cured by changing their diet. For a prisoner, a worker on board a ship, or a senior living in a care home – this might be the perfect cure.  The cure proves the cause. But maybe their diet is deficient because they are too poor to buy healthy food, cause #3.  Simply changing their diet is not possible, because they can’t afford healthy food. In this case, maybe getting the person a job, so they can afford healthy food, will cure the scurvy. If so, the lack of a job is cause #2, and a job cures that cause. But maybe, the person doesn’t have a job because they are alcoholic,, cause #1. In that case, they might be cured when their alcoholism is cured, so they can get a job, so they can afford healthy food. Of course, when we look far down the chain of causes – we might not find the best cure.  The best cure for an alcoholic might be to put them into a situation where their food is provided for them, curing the scurvy.

Note: When the cure addresses a cause too close to the illness, addressing it might not cure.  Providing the necessary Vitamin C as a supplement appears to provide the fastest cure. But it does not cure, when cause of the deficiency is not addressed. The patient must keep taking the medicine for the rest of their life.  When an illness is cured – no more medicines are necessary. If a cause is addressed to far from the illness, the cure is less likely to function or stick. Curing the alcoholism might not result in a job, might not reduce the poverty, might not lead to dietary changes that cure the scurvy.

Whenever we cure, the cure proves a cause.  Causal chains provide opportunities to find cures. Each link in the causal chain presents many cure opportunities. But take note: none of these cures is a medicine. Medical cures are rare. No medicine can cure any non-infectious disease.

Risks Factors are Additive

Risk factors are not chains, because they don’t actually cause specific illnesses, they only move us closer to danger, closer to illness.  Risk factors add up. When we are exposed to many risk factors, our likelihood of disease increases.

Each additional risk factor increases the risk of disease slightly.  Addressing a risk factor reduces the chances of disease slightly, but will not cure any disease when no illness, no case of disease is present.

Negative Risk Factors

The inverse of most risk factors is also a risk factor. Attempts to address one risk factor can push the inverse to a higher risk. Choosing which risk factor to address can be difficult – and necessitates the use of statistical data which can give correct recommendations in general, which becomes incorrect in specific cases. Seat belts save many lives, by holding the passenger steady and inside the vehicle in an accident. However, in a small number of cases, a seat belt can trap a passenger and result in death by preventative.

Illness Threshold

We don’t get an illness when the risk factors increase to some threshold, we get an illness when a cause, a causal chain creates an illness. Risk factors are used to design preventatives. Causes are used to cure.

Sometimes, several causes accumulate to cross a threshold and create an illness. We might detect these cases by finding a single item that lowers the threshold and creates a cure. In other cases, two or more causes each create an illness.. In these cases, addressing two or more causes is necessary to produce a complete cure. Addressing each individual cause produces a partial cure, a cure of one illness element when two illness elements are present.

Analysis and Reporting of Causes and Risk Factors

There are currently many issues in how causes of illness and risk factors of illness are reported, which make understanding difficult.

Causes of illness are rarely studied and seldom reported, for several reasons. Cured is not defined for most illnesses, and generally not defined for any illness cured by healthy actions. As a result, a depression “cured” by getting a new job, is not counted as a cure, and in today’s model of mental illness might not be counted as depression. It may appear that an illness is cured by medicine, when it is actually cured by healthiness – the medicine just happened at the same time. Most infections are cured by health. Gingivitis is a clear example, caused by unhealthiness. But when infections caused by gingivitis are cured with antibiotics, we place the “cause” on the infecting pathogen. When they are cured by improving healthiness the cure is ignored – it disappears.

Studying cause is difficult because every illness is unique and every disease, every individual case, might be cured by a unique action.

• “For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost.For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” – these are all past causes, all risk factors. The only present factor is the loss of the kingdom, which cannot be “cured”.

Causes of injuries are always speculative, never 100 percent. It’s speculative because we can always create chains of causes for any injury and ask “what if I had…”, “what if I hadn’t…” for each link in our chain of speculation. Attempting to assign percentages to causes of injuries is confusing, but because the cause cannot be used to cure – it cannot be proven. It can only be used for prevention – like a risk factor.

Risk factors are usually very small, but potentially very dangerous, so instead of reporting as a percentage risk, they are reported as an “increased risk”.  For example, every child has a small risk of drowning, but having a private swimming pool INCREASES the risk of drowning many times, several hundred percent.  Statistical calculations of risk are complex and error prone. Many risks are also healthy and rarely studied as risk factors.

Walking increases risk of sprained ankles, but walking is generally perceived as healthy – so the risks of walking are seldom analyzed.

This post is written using the concepts of illness, disease, causes, and cures as explored in the book: The Elements of Cure

Disclosure: I am not a doctor. There are no books about the concepts of cures and curing by doctors.

Originally Published Sept 21, 2018

Post Updated: Feb 20, 2020