3. Assessing Function and Preventing Disease
We’ve now seen how balancing your health and fitness can lead
to greater human performance, and provide for more energy for all
aspects of your life. But more often than not, some piece of this equa-
tion gets out of balance. The result is some type of bodily dysfunction
that, over time, can become some named disease. We’re all too famil-
iar with the common diseases, such as heart disease, cancer and
stroke. But how do these diseases begin? The truth is most diseases
don’t just happen overnight. They have their beginnings as some rel-
atively minor functional problem due to some imbalance of health
and fitness. Reducing these problems in their earliest stages, which is
relatively easy to do and a key focus of this book, is the best way to
avoid disease. These seemingly innocent functional problems, often
erroneously associated with aging, are termed functional illnesses.
Functional Illness
There are often no particular names for various early stages of disease
development. There are simply signs and symptoms, and previous to
that you may get no clues that a problem is arising. These signs and
symptoms, as subtle as they may be, are known as functional problems,
or functional illness. They are sometimes referred to as pre-disease, pre-
clinical or, in the case of cancer, pre-malignant. Functional illness is that
gray area between optimal health and disease.
Many people have some signs and symptoms of functional ill-
ness, such as fatigue, headaches, indigestion, back pain, allergies and
dozens of other complaints. Not only can functional illness be the
early stage of disease, it can also interfere with present quality of life.
It’s not normal to have these problems; it’s a sign that something is
wrong. The shelves of grocery stores and pharmacies are loaded with