Grundregulation – Eine Synthese medizinischen Denkens

Abstract

BackgroundThe ancient „Säftelehre” of diseases has maintained itself up to modern times becoming the basis of humoralpathology with its regulatory and holistic thinking. Its body of thought has progressed and developed with today's modern approach of cybernetic relationships and open energy systems in complementary medicine. Beginning with the Renaissance in the 16th century the cause-effect analytical thinking increasingly influenced medical science, displacing humoralpathology especially through the discovery of Virchow's cellularpathology which nearly eliminated humoralpathology. ObjectiveThis review is aimed at critically evaluating ‘Grundregulation’ to be a common scientific basis for both humoral- and cellularpathology. ResultsThe cell concept is a morphological abstraction, it cannot be accepted without the vital environment (extracellular matrix, ECM) of the cell. Vertebrates generally show as smallest common functional denominator of life the triad capillary-ECM-cell. The ECM acts as a molecular sieve between capillaries and cells. The dynamical properties of ECM determine all cell reactions. As the ECM is connected to the central nervous system via peripheral autonomic nerves and the endocrine gland system via the capillaries, both systems being connected to each other in the hypothalamic region, all superior regulatory centers can be influenced by the ECM and vice versa. This feedback is called ‘Grundregulation’. The ECM components are synthesized appropriately to the prevailing situation by descendents of the mesenchymal cell. Immunocompetent cells localized within the ECM are also descendents of the mesenchymal cell. Resulting psychoneuroimmunological findings are important for the understanding of the development of diseases especially chronic illnesses and tumors. ConclusionsWhereas complementary medicine is based on the cell-environment feedback theory of humoralpathology, modern cellularpathology explains health and disease by means of epigenetic-genetic feedback. Both theories merge in the theory of ‘Grundregulation’.