Adaption is the process by which a stressed system attempts to regulate itself in response to a new set of factors in order to achieve balance and harmony (often called “homeostasis”). Countries adapt, plants and animals adapt, social organization such as cultures adapt and so do we humans.
In fact, health promoting substances called “adaptogens” (which enhance regulation) are used in natural medicine because they help the body increase or decrease whatever is out of balance.

The good news, then, is that we are individually and collectively wondrously adaptable. Up to a point. Please prepare yourself and click here to see a graphic and heartbreaking example of what happens when we stretch the adaptive rubber band so far that it snaps. Because that is what we are doing with our bodies by exposing them to hundreds of thousands of toxins never encountered by any living thing prior to the last hundred years including deadly pesticides, radiation at levels unknown in nature, toxic, untested chemicals, new organisms and weird DNA.

How much can an organism, a gene, an organ, a marriage a brain or a society take before its adaptive abilities are overwhelmed and the stress is greater than the compensation for the stress that the system can manage. The result? Damage to the ability of the organism to function, self protect and self correct. If the stress is great enough to show, we call it by the name of some illness or another: cancer, social decay, infertility, depression, psoriasis, rising crime rate, looting, suicide, drout, autism, monster storms. The disorder and dysfunction (and the diagnosis) depends on the system being stressed but the principle is the same.

What can you do about it? Reduce the load. Reduce the number of stressors that the system has to adapt to and give the adaptive systems help, support and