12.5 Prevention: improving resiliency in immune and neural systems.

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"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Proper health management should spend as much money and energy on strengthening resiliency of body and mind as on curing disease. A state of physical and mental health depends to a large degree on resiliency of the immune and of the nervous systems. The idea of a parallel between the immune and the nervous systems, and the connections between the two, came to my mind in the 1970s. At that time I studied Communication Sciences at the University of Florida at Gainesville. That program was headed by Paul Moore, and later by Harry Hollien; they promoted exchanges with people of various disciplines. I had the opportunity to discuss, with behavioural scientists and biologists, such topics as the connection between early development and learning, and the basic motivation of human behaviour. In most areas of health care it is of prime importance to know the dividing line between voluntary and involuntary behaviour, and to master the procedures to move the boundary line in the wished for direction.

For a long time, I could only make slow progress in these fundamental issues, because in Utrecht I was constantly occupied with supervising clinical and educational activities. To give an example of our patient load in those times: between 1965 and 1985 we managed to clear with a small number of staff over ten thousand stutterers, who all found their way to appropriate kinds of treatment. Our group of clinicians, psychologists and physicians shared ideas about learning processes in personal development. Because we followed large numbers of patients over long periods of time we discerned new diachronic patterns. The concurrence of eczema, asthma and stuttering in families and individuals was a topic of study. Until then the division between the sciences had obstructed the view on possible logical connections between such diverse phenomena. We took on the task of designing a biological framework in which various hazards to the developing human body and mind could be accommodated: metabolic functions, sensomotor learning, social behaviour, cognitive style and speech-language development. Since heredity (species adaptation) and environment (individual adaptation) contribute in equal parts, the theory hinges on communication in nature and in man. Coping with the environment, characterised in this book as Adaptation and Defence (AcD), is directly related to physical and mental health.

12.6 Purpose of the book. Hearing is more truthful than seeing.