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This white paper argues that a regenerative health paradigm must transcend the limitations of traditional pathogenesis by synthesising three complementary frameworks: salutogenesis, life‑value onto‑axiology and salugenesis. Salutogenesis, rooted in Antonovsky’s work, focuses on psychosocial resources and the sense‑of‑coherence, highlighting how meaning, manageability and comprehensibility foster resilience. Recent expansions introduce dynamic and culturally sensitive interpretations of coherence and new measurement scales for wellness. McMurtry’s life‑value onto‑axiology provides a normative foundation by defining value in terms of the expansion of thought, felt‑being and action, critiquing the dominant self‑maximising rationality and proposing a life coherence principle that requires actions to enable rather than disable life and life systems. Naviaux’s salugenesis theory contributes a mechanistic, bottom‑up account of healing that centres on mitochondrial phenotypes, the cell danger response and environmental factors.
Comparative analysis reveals that salutogenesis lacks an explicit ethical orientation, life‑value axiology is abstract without mechanistic grounding, and salugenesis focuses narrowly on biology without addressing meaning or ethics. The paper proposes an integrated model wherein biological healing, psychosocial coherence and ethical values are interdependent. Sense‑of‑coherence is reframed as life coherence, uniting metabolic balance with cognitive and emotional integration. The vagus nerve and purinergic signaling illustrate the interplay between physiological and psychological processes. Environmental stewardship and social justice are positioned as health interventions, linking individual healing to planetary well‑being.
Practical recommendations include developing composite health indices that combine salutogenic scales with biomarkers of mitochondrial function, implementing therapies that support mitochondrial dynamics and enhance sense‑of‑coherence, and enacting policies that reduce pollutants and social inequities. Future research should explore the interactions between psychological states and mitochondrial processes, evaluate multi‑level interventions, and operationalise the life‑value compass for policy evaluation. By aligning bottom‑up healing processes with top‑down psychosocial resources and life‑centred ethics, this paradigm seeks to enable a more coherently inclusive range of thought, felt‑being and action, ensuring health and resilience for individuals, communities and the biosphere.
