As already mentioned in this chapter, common experience suggests stress causes diseases and
common sense suggests raising resistance to stress can prevent disease. Experimentally, Selye
demonstrated that chronic exposure to stress does cause disease (1) and Brekhman
demonstrated that adaptogens can prevent disease by raising stressor resistance. (2) Thus, the
idea of preventing disease through the enhancement of the body’s natural resistance
mechanism has a strong theoretical and practical basis.
Adaptogen is the word currently used to describe drugs with this action. However, there may
be a more appropriate term. In the 1980’s AI Baranov published a paper entitled “Medicinal
Uses of Ginseng and Related Plants in the Soviet Union: Recent Trends in the Soviet Literature.”
In this paper a new term surfaced: resistogen. (3) In the paper, resistogen is used as a synonym
for adaptogen. As these drugs raise the body’s resistance to stressors, and thereby aid
adaptation, resistogen is as appropriate a term for their function as an adaptogen. In fact,
resistogen seems a more appropriate term for the activity of adaptogenic drugs for it accurately
depicts what these drugs do.
Moreover, resistogen has fewer connotations than the word adaptogen. When the word
adaptogen is mentioned, some people think of Darwin. Others think of it in psychological
terms, as in “he adapted to his new job.” Indeed, adaptogen, as far as words go, conjures lots of
different meanings. Unfortunately, the meaning of a botanical drug that raises resistance and
thereby prevents disease is not one of those automatically attributed meanings.
On the other hand, resistogen suggests resistance. Indeed, as shown, these drugs raise
resistance to infection, resistance to toxic compounds, and resistance to disease. Henceforth,
this class of drug will be designated ?resistogen? in this document.