Restorgenesis: A new concept

This article suggests a new concept, named restorgenesis. It addresses issues related to the essence of rehabilitation, such as defining the patient's potential for recovery, the milestones of the recovery process, its facilitating and impinging factors. This concept is a hybrid of two already existing notions: pathogenesis, i.e. the definition of the factors in the individual and his/her environment that are causative of illness, and salutogenesis, i.e. the definition of factors in the individual as well as in the environment that promote health. We suggest the notion of restorgenesis to embrace the processes of re-building and re-equilibrating that are at the core of the recovery process. Finally, we study the relevance of the recently introduced concept of allostasis, which includes the psychological and physiological factors related to the human system optimal functioning, to the process of rehabilitation.