Today, we study illness to death, but healthiness and cure are not in many medical dictionaries. Medicine, the words and practices of medicine, have long histories spanning many centuries and many cultures. Healthicine, the studies of arts and sciences of health and healthiness, is not a word in any current dictionary. When medicine uses the word health, it is generally a marketing term for treatment of illness and disease as in health (medical) insurance, health (sickness) care, health (hospital) administrator.
Hierarchy of Healthicine
The Hierarchy of Healthicine is the hierarchy of life. Life begins when genetics and nutrients cooperate, although without intention, to grow, reproduce, and evolve. Life rises in complexity to create cells, cell masses, and then tissues, first organs, organ systems, and bodies.
Cells are the first bodies. Each body is an individual life entity in the hierarchy of life, of healthicine.
The body develops senses, the first hint of a mind, to identify food and danger, mobility to move towards food and away from danger. It develops many other abilities as it rises up the hierarchy as it rises in complexity. These senses become more and more sensitive and sophisticated, developing into brains. Body and brains combine to create a sophisticated mind.
The first cell has the spirits of life, to survive and reproduce. Minds work together with the body to create more complex and sophisticated spirits.
Community
As soon as the first cell reproduced, it created a community. Today, biologists find it difficult to culture cells in isolation – because life depends on communities of non-identical cells. Successful communities thrive on the competition and cooperation, even without intention, of individual life entities.
Each layer boundary in the hierarchy is the start of a new community. Cells, in cooperation and competition, gradually create communities with a purpose, tissues. Tissues, in competition and cooperation, gradually develop into limbs and organs. Limbs and organs, in cooperation and competition, gradually develop sophisticated organ systems. Each new layer emerges gradually as cooperation rises, as community spirit grows. Competition of individuals is a powerful driving force to create more powerful communities. Healthier communities enable healthier individuals. Healthier individuals create stronger communities.
Sensory and nervous system communities create the body’s brains and these brains rise in complexity with competition and cooperation to create a powerful mind.
Each layer in the hierarchy is a meta, a whole that is more than the sum of parts in the lower layers. Bodies, minds, and spirits work together to create communities of humans – from families to tribes to religions, corporations, unions, governments – informal communities like religions and formal communities of communities of communities like the United Nations, the World Bank.
Primary Disciplines of Healthicine
To study healthicine, we explore this fundamental hierarchy from a ‘health view’, to learn more about health, the determinants of health and the causes and cures of illness. The primary layers of the hierarchy are one important set of disciplines of the arts and sciences of healthicine. Many of these layers are disciplines of medicine today – but we don’t study health with the same energy as we study medicine. The layer of mind is not clearly defined, and hardly studied by current practices of medicine. It’s easier to drug the brain than to study the mind. The top two layers, spirits and community, are almost totally ignored by medicine. Medicine, the science of medicine functions in fear of spirit – even as it makes a scientific mountain out of “placebo effects”.
There is another set of primary disciplines in the hierarchy of healthicine – the processes. Studies of biology have identified key processes of life, independent of health. There are many key processes that act throughout the hierarchy: growth, movement, assimilation and elimination, communications and cooperation, defence. Some processes are not present in lower layers, where components and function are simpler, but from the cellular level upwards – all of these processes are important aspects of healthiness in every layer. The processes become more complex and more sophisticated as we rise up the hierarchy.
The most important process can be seen at every junction in the hierarchy – cooperation. Without the cooperation of communities of entities in each layer, the next layer cannot emerge. As the hierarchy rises, cooperation and communities emerge between layers as well. Humans, with all their complex communities of individuals, cannot survive without the existence and cooperation – without intention – of bacterial life forms.
Competition drives entities to be stronger and healthier. Cooperation becomes an essential part of competition, because it enables higher levels of success.
Secondary Disciplines of Healthicine
Each layer of the hierarchy intersects and interacts with every other layer to create second level disciplines of health, as seen in the diagram. Many of these second level disciplines are also disciplines of current medical theory. Some are clearly absent from current medical practice. The layers of spirit and community are not studied from a medical perspective, mind is poorly studied, so all disciplines of mind, spirit, and community are weak in the practices of conventional medicine. Some alternative medical practitioners have some right to claim a wider view – but that view is not developed from a scientific perspective.
Illness> Disease> Sickness
The World Health Organization has the definition of health backwards, defining it as “not just the absence of illness”.
Health is whole. An illness is a hole in health. An absence of healthiness.
The words illness, disease, and sickness are often used interchangably in the practice of medicine. Sometimes, they are more clearly deliniated. In the science of healthicine, they are clearly defined as follows:
Illness – an illness is what the patient has, what the patient experiences when there is a hole in their healthiness.
Disease – a disease is what is defined by the medical community and diagnosed by a doctor.
Sickness – is an illness as perceived the the community.
Thus:
“A patient goes to the doctor with an illness and goes home with a disease. Their community sees that they are sick.”
However, in specific cases, a person might be ill, without a diagnosis, even with an illness that cannot be diagnosed. A doctor might diagnose a disease in a patient who feels no illness. A community might view a person to be sick, when the person perceives no illness and when no diagnosis of any disease is possible.
Health, Healthiness, Unhealthiness
Health is whole.
An illness is a specific instance of “ill”, thus, a healthiness is a specific instance of healthiness.
A healthiness is a measurable instance of health. A specific healthiness is measured as a percentage of a whole. The corresponding unhealthiness is the inverse of healthiness such that the sum of healthiness and unhealthiness adds up to 100 percent, a whole. We can view unhealthiness as the “potential for improvement in healthiness”.
The Healthicine Creed
My thoughts on health and healthicine were summarized into a single page, published as the Healthicine Creed – which has been revised several times over several years. Today, it reads as follows:
The Healthicine Creed
Health is whole. Health is wide and deep.
Health is slow and steady.
Health is honest and true.
Health enables freedoms. Freedoms enable health.
Health encompasses all life processes, from genetics to Gaia.
Health is a verb. “To health” is to make healthier.
Health is a noun: A healthiness is a measurable instance of health.
An unhealthiness is a potential for improvement in health.
An illness is a hole in the health of body, mind, spirit and community.
Every illness has a cause connected to consequences.
Every illness is a judgment.
Causal illnesses have active causes.
Injury illnesses are holes in body, mind, spirit or community.
Attribute illnesses include blockages or leakages.
Blockages block healthy bodies, minds, spirits, and communities.
Leakages leak healthiness from bodies, minds, spirits, and communities.
Chronic illnesses have chronic causes.
Symptomicines can create and facilitate chronic illnesses.
Every illness can be cured. No disease can be cured.
Causal cures stop the progression of a causal illness.
Healing cures repair damage and defend against illness.
Transformations cure boundary illnesses.
Transformation cures often require healing to complete.
Health is the best preventative.
Health is the best cure, the only true cure.
Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness.
Tracy Kolenchuk, Creator: Healthicine|Updated January 7, 2018
History
The Hierarchy of Healthicine was first explored via the blog Personal Health Freedom in an attempt to understand and define health.
The first post was titled A Hierarchy of Health, was published in July 2010. It defined the basic layers of the hierarchy. I designed and wrote the initial hierarchy of health out of frustration with the few definitions of health that existed, and the weaknesses of those definitions. The main definition of health is currently the definition published by the World Health Organization in 1948. It has not been updated since 1948. The WHO definition “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” has two primary weaknesses. It is perfection based: “a state of complete…. well being”, thus not subject to measurement and it is illness based “the absence of disease or infirmity.” According to the WHO definition, health is perfection, nothing less. This definition is a very weak tool in any attempts to understand and improve health. This is illustrated by many subsequent surveys of health by WHO, which rely exclusively on the ‘presence of illness’ to measure health.
I needed something to recognize the complexity of health. Health is not just the absence of illness, and is more than the wholeness that is often articulated by alternative health practitioners. But how much more? Gradually I realized that the definition of health is to be found in the hierarchy of life, which starts with genetics and nutrients, and rises through cells, tissues, organs, systems, body, minds, spirits and communities.
Over several years, I have explored the hierarchy of healthicine in many posts, and continue to use the hierarchy as a foundation for a better understanding of both healthiness and illness. Here are links to some of the historical and exploratory posts:
Hierarchy of Health – Primary and Secondary Disciplines, October 27, 2011 just over a year after the initial post, I created an updated post about the hierarchy, with a more detailed look at each layer.
Hierarchy of Healthiness, later renamed as the Hierarchy of Healthicine, April 2012 – written for Wakeup-World.com. This post was re-published by several sites, including the Health Freedom Alliance. It was also published on the sister site to Healthicine.org, Personal Health Freedom in September 201212.
Hierarchy of Healthicine: Sources of Healthiness and Causes of Illness, June 2013 – in which I explored the layers of the hierarchy that we can use to improve our health and prevent illness from occurring.
After about two years, I consolidated information from Healthicine posts on both sites, into a book. Healthicine: The Book and a short time after an introductory book.
In 2016, I discovered that the word CURE does not exist in many medical dictionaries and is not defined in medical treatment references except for communicable diseases. Therefore, we might view all non-communicable diseases as incurable in the current theories of conventional medicine. After 2 years research into the concepts of cure, cures, curing and cured, I published the book: A Calculus of Curing, a comprehensive study of the concepts of cure.
This post was first published on October 21, 2014, and has been revised several times.
