The Biology of Belief

 The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton

 

“If I could be anybody, who would I be?

Since childhood we’ve spent inordinate amount of time pondering over this question. Most of us obsessed with this fantasy, wish to become anybody but self. “How can I even try to be like someone when I am already programmed with the genes inherited from my parents?”  We find never ending drawbacks in us and imagine a second chance from God to have a life with different set of qualities in us. Bruce Lipton in this book explains that it is not Genes that decide the person we are, but it is the behavior of our cells and the cells behave as per our belief. Beliefs control Biology!

 In 1952 a young British physician made a mistake that was a blessing in disguise. The doctor cured a disorder of warts of a 15 years old boy using hypnosis. The boys leathery skin looked more like an elephants hide than a human’s skin. The first session of hypnosis focused on one arm. When the boy was in a hypnotic trance the Doctor told him that the skin on his arm would heal and turn into healthy pink skin. It did happen after a week. Later the doctor discovered that it was a lethal genetic disease called congenital ichthyosis. By reversing the symptoms using the power of mind the change happened. The doctor tried the experiment few more times to see the magic. It did not happen all the times. When there is a doubt in the mind, the cells get confused.  The principles behind these exceptions trump established “Truths”. The fact is that harnessing the power of our mind can be more effective than drugs we’ve been programmed to believe we need. Energy is more effective means of affecting matter than chemicals. So we need to have Placebo effects to be more powerful in treating diseases. When we can’t change the codes of our genetic blueprints, but we can change our minds.

Another example is of Nocebo.

Mr. Sam Londe a retired Shoe salesman in 1974 was diagnosed with cancer of esophagus. The doctors made him believe that he had few weeks left in his life. Mr. Londe did die after e few weeks. So?

The sad part of the story was that autopsy found very little cancer in his body, certainly not enough to kill him. How did Sam die?

He did die with little cancer but not because of it. He believed that he was going to die.

 Science of signal transduction focuses upon bio-chemical pathways by which cells respond to the environment cues. Environmental signals engage cytoplasmic process that can alter the gene expression and thereby control the cell-fate, influence cell movement, control cell survival or even sentence a cell to death. Signal transduction is directly linked to its perception of the environment. In short, the character of our life is based upon how we perceive it. So now I should no longer ask “If I could be anybody, who would I be?” For now the answer is no-brainer. I want to be me!

 You may consider yourself an individual but in reality you are cooperative community of around five trillion single-celled. These cells are amoeba-like individual organisms that have evolved a cooperative strategy for their mutual survival and then the adaptive growth. We are simply consequence of “Collective amoebic consciousness”.

Cells life is controlled by physical and energetic environment and not by its genes. Epigenetics, the study of molecular mechanisms by which environment controls gene activity, today is one of the most active area of research. Genes are simply molecular blueprints used in the construction of cells, tissues and organs. Environment serves as a ‘Contractor’ who reads and engages those genetic blueprints. It is a single cell awareness of the environment, not its genes, that sets into motion the mechanisms of life. There’s a science based path that takes us from job as a perennial “Victim” to the new position as “Co-creator” of our destiny.

 The mastermind:

Nucleus is not the brain of cell, but it is cell membrane. Bruce calls it Magical Mem-brain, the mechanism by which our body translates the environmental signals into behaviors. In the membrane the receptor proteins are equivalent of our eyes, ears and nose, whereas the effector proteins control the way genes are “read” and these proteins function in response to the environmental influences. It is the job of the membrane in a single cell to be aware of the environment and set in motion an appropriate response. In our body these functions have been taken over by specialized group of cells called Nervous system.

 The biochemical reactions responsible for life are like the Henry Ford assembly lines. One chemical causes a reaction, followed by another reaction with a different chemical, etc. The linear flow of information happens from A to B to C to D to E. The disorder in the human body as a disease or dysfunction can be attributed to malfunctioning in one of the steps along the chemical assembly line. However the quantum perspective reveals that the universe is an integration of interdependent energy fields that are entangled in meshwork of interactions. The speed of e-impulses is up to 432 km/hr.

                        

 When a drug is introduced into the body to treat a malfunction in one protein, that drug inevitably interacts with at least one and possibly many other proteins and damage the function there. This is what we call side effect of a drug. Multicellular organisms can survive with few genes because the same gene products (protein) are used for a variety of functions. This is similar to using the twenty six letters of alphabet to construct every word in our language.

 Histamine: Like our Shivaji Maharaj the histamine plays guerilla attacks on the local spot where it spots the trouble. If you have a rash on your arm, the relentless itching results from the release of Histamine, the signal molecule that activates the inflammatory response to the allergen. Histamine is released only at the site of the rash. In a stressful state, the release of histamine within the brain increases blood flow to the nervous tissues, enhancing the neurological process needed for the survival.  The drugs that act as antihistamine to curb itching inadvertently alters the neural circulation in many cases that then results in side effects of drowsy feeling. In quite a few cases the drugs control the symptoms without irradiating the root problem. According to the American medical association, iatrogenic illness (Illness resulting from medical treatment) is the third leading cause of death. There are 3 lakh deaths per year in the US.

 Politics of cell community

The Histamine has two signals H1 and H2 that respond to the same histamine signal. H1 evokes protection response whereas H2 evokes growth response. The emergency signal adrenaline also has switches called Alpha and Beta, supporting two responses of protection and growth respectively. When both Histamine and Adrenaline are simultaneously introduced in the body, the adrenaline signals override the histamine signals. If Histamine is the General Manager of the central nervous system, Adrenaline acts as the CEO of it.

 HPA axis:

The HPA axis mobilizes protection against external treats. HPA is an axis that connects Hypothalamus – pituitary – Adrenal glands.  When the Hypothalamus of the brain perceives an environmental threat it secrets a corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF) which travels to the Pituitary gland, the ‘Master gland’ that is responsible for organizing 5 trillion cells of the community. This P glands release adrenocorticotropic hormones (ACTH) into blood. ATCH makes its way to the Adrenal glands, informing them of the need to coordinate the body’s ‘Fight or Flight’ response.

 

                                 

Fight or Flight.  Why would the Adrenal system shut down the immune system?

Imagine you are in African jungle in a tent suffering from bacterial infection. You hear a gutty howl of a lion. The brain needs to make a decision about which is a bigger threat, the Lion or the bacterial infection. It will do your body no good to control the bacterial infection if you let the lion maul you. So the body drifts all the energy for fight to survive your encounter with lion. Therefore the secondary consequence of engaging the HPA axis is that it interferes with our ability to fight the disease. HPA axis also interferes with our ability to think clearly. That’s why we make mistakes when we are scared.

 Fear Kills:

Our protection system was not designed to be continuously activated. Even the mild stress or fear has an adverse consequence on our health. Our daily stressors are constantly activating the HPA axis, priming our body for action. Almost every major illness that people acquire has been linked to chronic stress. There are ways in our hands that can reduce fear and stress. These negative feelings result in cellular breakdown whereas spreading love contributes healthy cellular life.

 The power of subconscious mind

A chiropractor was once asked Bruce to hold his arm out and resist the downward pressure he applied to it. Bruce was resisting the pressure applied on his arm while saying, ”My name is Bruce”. The chiropractor kept increasing the pressure while Bruce was repeating his line, “My name is Bruce”. After a while the chiropractor asked him to say, “My name is Marry”. The arm of Bruce dropped down, despite his strong resistance.  Bruce tried an attempt again with extra efforts to resist his arm dropping while saying,” My name is Marry”. Yet again his arm dropped like a stone.

When our conscious mind has a belief that is in conflict with a formerly learned ‘Truth’ stored in the subconscious mind, the intellectual conflict expresses itself as a weakening of the body’s muscles.

As such there is no need to consider the subconscious mind a scary, super powerful, destructive knowledge. In reality it is an emotionless database of stored programs, whose function is strictly concerned with reading environmental signals and engaging in hardwired behavioral programs, no questions, no judgements made. It is simply a programmable hard drive into which our life experiences are downloaded. A ball coming over your face gets a reaction to blink, from our subconscious mind signal that travels with 2cr environmental signals per second vs the conscious mind signals that travel with 40 environmental signals per second. The subconscious mind uses the environmental cues and then immediately engages the previously acquired behavior- all without help, supervision or the approval from the conscious mind. My subconscious mind allows to me think on my works to do while my subconscious mind uses the hard drive data to drive the car on the routine path.

 All in all, we need to take heed of the growth and protection lessons from cells and shift lives into growth whenever possible. Charles Darwin said, It is the survival of the fittest. Bruce Lipton in this book says it is the survival of the most loved ones.

Disclaimer:

This is just an attempt to preserve the good points made by Bruce Lipton. In the process I have used my experience, discretion and prediction to settle on a point.

 

Vinay Wagh,