Your body is NOT a bank account!
The human body is an adaptable complex system comprised of biological tissues. Biological tissues are stress responsive tissues which have the capacity to self organize and self repair. For example, when a stressor is inputted into the system, the tissues will self organize and self repair to better handle that specific stressor. The process of increasing capacity as a result of specific stressors is a biological principle known as the SAID Principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands).
During the self repair process, the body will overcompensate (up to the individual’s biological limit); thus, increasing the capacity of those tissues to better withstand that stressor in the future. The body overcompensates in the repair process as it believes that that same stressor will occur in the future; however, the stressor will be worse; thus, capacity is increased.
Acute training/manual therapy stressors aid in enabling the body to increase capacity to better handle stressors in the future. If stressor inputs are removed from biological systems, the body will decrease capacity and become fragile and weak.
“Your body is a process. It starts when you’re born, ends when you die. Everything in between requires work.”
Dr. Andreo Spina
Optimal stressor inputs function as information to the complex system to overcompensate and develop increased capacity so that the organism is a better match for the demands being placed upon them. Thus, the absence of stressor inputs in biological systems is harmful.
A bank account does not have the capacity to self repair. Thus, when a withdraw is made (stressor) the account is harmed from the event.
Sadly, individuals in the training/rehabilitation, manual therapy fields do not grasp basic biological principles or complex systems. Because of this ignorance, trainers/therapists remove vital stressors from individuals, which hurts the system as a whole making the individual fragile and perpetuates the injury process.
Thanks to Dr. Michael Chivers who exposed me to complex systems and Donella Meadows book: Thinking in Systems.
