Over the ages, many theories have been proposed to explain the cause of disease. In Ancient times people believed diseases were sent from God (or the Devil). Hippocrates proposed diseases have a cause, and defined the causes of disease based on an imbalance in the four humors (yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, blood). The miasmatic theory attributed disease to noxious air and vapors. The theory of spontaneous generation was a belief that living organisms (such as fleas and maggots) could arise from non-living matter. In 1878 Robert Koch proved a bacterium could cause tuberculosis, which gave birth to the germ theory. Between 1880 and 1927, many noted scientists proposed pathogens were the cause of a wide variety of chronic diseases.

Today, medical science defines chronic diseases based on symptoms and findings, such as inflammation, fungus, alteration of the microbiome, irritable bowel, pain, mental decline, clogged arteries, excess sugar, etc. Syndromes abound, which define multiple symptoms and findings in the same patient; and each new symptom or finding can lead to a newly named disease. A few medical scientists have continued to propose infectious causes of chronic disease over the course of recent decades, but the idea languishes in the literature and veterinary science; and is thwarted by scientific limitations requiring only reports of “associations”.

Symptoms and findings have a cause! Chronic infection with immortal pathogens can cause the symptoms which define chronic disease, including inflammation, fungal overgrowth, alterations in the microbiome, reduced immunity, chronic pain, heart disease, cancer, PID, mental decline, and many other chronic diseases. Recognizing immortal pathogens and parasites can cause the known symptoms of chronic diseases, in a cascading series of symptoms and findings, is the beginning of understanding how to diagnose, treat, and even cure chronic disease, based on root causes.