Regeneration is a better ideal for health than restoration | Aeon Essays

Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates defined health as a body in balance.

Modern medicine celebrates the ability to diagnose problems based on localisation of symptoms.

But what if health isn't simply a return to a previous state? If we think about health as part of considering organisms as organisms as no return in terms of regeneration, we ask what regeneration means.

Regeneration is typically thought of as renewal, revitalisation, rejuvenation, repair, recovery and a lot of other re-words.

In our book, What Is Regeneration ? ( 2022 ), we laid out ideas of regeneration arising in the 18th century and looked closely at the contributions of early 20th-century biologists.

Adaptive, in this context, means that systems change through the process of regeneration in response to both internal and external conditions.

A system before regeneration will never be identical to a system after regeneration; there will always be changes in the parts or relationships between them, even if they look or function the same’ If we consider health as an outcome of regeneration, we should lean into regeneration when considering health.