Salutogenesis & Adaptogens – The Ability to Become Healthy

Pathogenesis asks: Why do people become ill? Salutogenesis, by contrast, asks: Why do some people remain healthy despite stress—and how can each individual strengthen this ability? This is precisely where adaptogens come in: plant compounds that do not heal the body but improve its ability to adapt to stress. This article explains how the two concepts are connected and how you can use them in everyday life.

📚 For anyone who wants to delve deeper: Our research overview of salutogenesis & adaptogens summarizes 118 scientific papers, complete with a fully linked study list.

What Is Salutogenesis?

The term was coined in the 1970s by medical sociologist Aaron Antonovsky. Instead of searching for the causes of illness, as classical pathogenesis does, he examined which factors make people resilient—even under extreme stress. His best-known study focused on Holocaust survivors and the question of why some of them remained psychologically stable despite traumatic experiences.

Antonovsky’s central finding: Health is not a state but an ongoing process on a continuum between “healthy” and “ill.” The decisive factor is the so-called sense of coherence.

→ Explained in detail in: What Is Salutogenesis? Understanding Health According to Antonovsky

The Three Components of the Sense of Coherence

  1. Comprehensibility – perceiving the world and one’s own situation as orderly and explainable rather than chaotic.
  2. Manageability – the confidence that one has sufficient resources to cope with demands.
  3. Meaningfulness – experiencing challenges as meaningful and worthwhile rather than as pointless burdens.

People with a strong sense of coherence assess stressors differently and therefore activate different physiological and psychological coping strategies. The article Sense of Coherence: How We Develop Our Sense of Connection explains how this “sensory organ for coherence” can be deliberately developed.

What Are Adaptogens?

Adaptogens are a group of plant-based active compounds that help the body adapt to physical, chemical, or biological stress without one-sidedly stimulating or suppressing specific organ functions. The term originated in Soviet pharmacology in the 1940s and was later refined: A true adaptogen has a normalizing effect, regardless of whether a body system is overactive or underactive.

Among the best-studied adaptogens are Rhodiola rosea, ashwagandha, eleuthero (Siberian ginseng), and medicinal mushrooms such as reishi.

→ The basics are covered in: What Are Adaptogens? Origins, Effects, and the Idea of Adaptation and What Is an Adaptogen? Adaptation Instead of Chronic Stress

The Mechanism of Action: Hormesis

The key to understanding adaptogens is the principle of hormesis: Stimuli that would be harmful at a high dose trigger an adaptive response at a low dose, strengthening the organism. Familiar examples include strength training (minor muscle-fiber tears lead to greater muscle mass), cold exposure, and fasting. At the cellular level, adaptogens create a similar mild stress stimulus that trains the stress axis (the HPA axis) instead of suppressing it.

→ For more detail: Hormesis: How Positive Stress Can Make Us Stronger and How Do You Kill a Hydra? On Antifragility and Health

The Connection: Salutogenesis as a Principle, Adaptogens as a Tool

Salutogenesis and adaptogens are based on the same fundamental assumption: Resilience does not arise from avoiding stress but from training the ability to adapt to stress.

  • Salutogenesis describes this principle at the level of the mind, the experience of meaning, and lifestyle.
  • Adaptogens implement it at the cellular and hormonal levels—for example, in the regulation of cortisol, inflammatory markers, and energy metabolism.

Those who strengthen their sense of coherence change how they assess stress. Those who use adaptogens support how the body responds physiologically to stress. Both levels interact: A person who experiences challenges as meaningful and manageable demonstrably releases different stress-hormone patterns than someone who feels helpless—and a body whose stress axis is well regulated finds it easier to remain mentally clear and capable of taking action.

This interaction between mental and physical resilience is also addressed in the concept of the mental immune system: The Mental Immune System: Learning Self-Regulation in Everyday Life.

Five Essays from Lockdown: What We Can Really Influence

In spring 2020, during the first lockdown, a series of five essays was created addressing what individuals can actually control themselves in a crisis: Self-Efficacy, Stress, and the Immune System, Antifragility and the Hydra, Sense of Coherence, Optimism Can Be Learned, and Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy. Together, they paint a picture of how mindset, meaning, and explanatory style shape our immune system through psychoneuroimmunology—topics that remain relevant far beyond the pandemic. The product story behind Imun Guard explains how this period also led to something very practical.

Strengthening Salutogenesis in Everyday Life

Practical approaches that repeatedly emerge in research on the sense of coherence and resilience:

Using Adaptogens in Everyday Life

In addition to classic adaptogens, other secondary plant compounds also provide adaptive stimuli:

Related topic clusters on Adaptonics: Artemisia annua · Pine Pollen · Rockrose

Conclusion

Salutogenesis and adaptogens are two sides of the same coin: Neither sees health as the absence of stress but as a trained ability to cope with challenges and grow through them. Combining both levels—a strong sense of coherence and well-regulated stress physiology—creates the foundation for genuine, robust resilience.

Read more: Salutogenesis – The Ability to Become Healthy · Friedrich Schiller – A Prophet of Salutogenesis?