Discussion Board

Well I have brought it up and all I got was criticism and arguments. So, like Dr. McDougall says in his books, I decided to be an example rather than preaching about it. I've made it pretty clear how I intend to eat and my family is fine with that, but they are not interested in reading about a plant based diet much less eating that way and I can't force them to change even though they need to.

I really see it as passing on not-much-known information to people who need it. Frankly I'm getting tired of doctors who are not doing their jobs.

I feel this is very valuable information that is not well known and other people deserve a chance for better health.

I've read that sharing a good idea or opportunity is similar to a waitress going around, asking if anyone would like coffee. Some people want it, and others don't like coffee. Some may need to think about it and ask for coffee when she comes by again. They aren't putting US down for sharing, they are putting down the idea, or muling over if it is for them.

I think a better analogy is asking if anyone would like to change their religion. That is about how deep this goes and is a much closer marker of what you will get back from those who have not asked first.

“Our health is not controlled by genetics,” he told me in his characteristically upbeat and excited manner. “Conventional medicine is operating from an archaic view that we’re controlled by genes. This misunderstands the nature of how biology works.”

Medical professionals from around the globe may curl their lips and snarl, but Dr. Lipton’s research—and the empirical evidence of colleagues—is forcing the issue enough so that changes in medical-school curriculums are currently underway.

But let’s back up for a moment and sit through a blessedly unscientific explanation of Lipton’s mind-expanding logic and what is known as epigenetics, “the study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence.”

“Medicine does miracles,” he said, “but it’s limited to trauma. The AMA protocol is to regard our physical body like a machine, in the same way that an auto mechanic regards a car. When the parts break, you replace them—a transplant, synthetic joints, and so on—and those are medical miracles.

“The problem is that while they have an understanding that the mechanism isn’t working, they’re blaming the vehicle for what went wrong. They believe that the vehicle, in this case our bodies, is controlled by genes. But guess what? They don’t take into consideration that there’s actually a driver in that car. The new science, epigenetics, reveals that the vehicles—or the genes—aren’t responsible for the breakdown. It’s the driver.”

In essence, if you don’t know how to drive, you’re going to mess up the vehicle. In the simplest translation, we can agree that lifestyle is the key to taking care of ourselves. Think well, eat well, and exercise, and your body won’t break down and need new parts.

Dr. Lipton refers to the work of Dr. Dean Ornish to extrapolate. “Dr. Ornish has taken conventional cardiovascular patients, provided them with important lifestyle insights (better diet, stress-reduction techniques, and so on), and without drugs, the cardiovascular disease was resolved. Ornish relayed that if he’d gotten the same results with a drug, every doctor would be prescribing it.”

“There’s a force moving within us, a biological imperative to survive and to avoid death. It’s built in. Right now, there’s the question of our own extinction, and none of us want to die.”

What is it in the subconscious mind of the individual—or the collective whole—that takes us to the brink of destruction? Only through entering the world of the subconscious mind’s programming will we find out. “I was living in a self-imposed world that resembled purgatory,” Dr. Lipton recalled in a quiet voice. “I thought, ‘What the hell is wrong with this world?’ Now I’m walking in heaven. I’ve recognized who I really am and have rewritten the limiting programs that disempowered me.”

The new science of epigenetics promises that every person on the planet has the opportunity to become who they really are, complete with unimaginable power and the ability to operate from, and go for, the highest possibilities, including healing our bodies and our culture and living in peace. ***

I think a better analogy is asking if anyone would like to change their religion.

I was thinking when people start sharing their business with us like their illnesses, disease and weight issues and we have the opportunity to share.

To some a suggestion of changing diet can be like changing their religion, and to others like changing their clothes.

There's a ying and yang to everything, I guess.

Health is the greatest motivator as nothing motivates anyone more than life or death. The simplest changes of soaking ones feet can cascade into a avalanche of desire to change their habitual habits by taking responsibility in how they think, eat and move. And what is so exciting is subconsciously we eat the same amount of weight of food daily. How easy can it be? The body doesn't lie.

Alas, this is not true for a large number of people. I have a sister-in-law with cancer. She smokes, and pretends to certain people that she has quit. She has decided to change her diet, in response to her cancer (to its to date promising treatment, that is) to vegan four times. But you know, she just "can't give up meat, or cheese." Not even for her life. What motivates her is what she likes to eat, regardless of what it does to her, and the myriad rationalizations for smoking (it's not lung cancer, I'm tense, it's hard to quit). Each of these unhelpful things she does is a direct response to physical pleasure and comfort. An ideal body, in the abstract, considered for its needs, doesn't lie, but then it's also not a real thing. For people, the body lies constantly.

How I wish health, life and death, were the greatest motivators. This is wildly at variance with observation, however.

That’s fine and dandy for people with heart disease, diabetes, or obesity, but what about cancer? Even the strictest lifestyle changes don’t cure cancer in everyone. What about genetic predispositions to getting the disease? “It used to be that we thought a mutant gene caused cancer,” Lipton admitted, “but with epigenetics, all of that has changed.”

Then he explained how his research revealed the science of epigenetics. “I placed one stem cell into a culture dish, and it divided every ten hours. After two weeks, there were thousands of cells in the dish, and they were all genetically identical, having been derived from the same parent cell. I divided the cell population and inoculated them in three different culture dishes.

“Next, I manipulated the culture medium—the cell’s equivalent of the environment—in each dish. In one dish, the cells became bone, in another, muscle, and in the last dish, fat. This demonstrated that the genes didn’t determine the fate of the cells because they all had the exact same genes. The environment determined the fate of the cells, not the genetic pattern. So if cells are in a healthy environment, they are healthy. If they’re in an unhealthy environment, they get sick.”

Dr. Lipton then took this a step further, which brings us back to the cancer question. “Here’s the connection: With fifty trillion cells in your body, the human body is the equivalent of a skin-covered petri dish. Moving your body from one environment to another alters the composition of the ‘culture medium,’ the blood. The chemistry of the body’s culture medium determines the nature of the cell’s environment within you. The blood’s chemistry is largely impacted by the chemicals emitted from your brain. Brain chemistry adjusts the composition of the blood based upon your perceptions of life. So this means that your perception of any given thing, at any given moment, can influence the brain chemistry, which, in turn, affects the environment where your cells reside and controls their fate. In other words, your thoughts and perceptions have a direct and overwhelmingly significant effect on cells.”

This echoes, from a highly scientific point of view, what the intuitive and spiritual healers have been advocating for years: your mind can and does contribute to both the cause and healing of whatever ails you—including cancer.

Other than the mind, two other factors impact the fate of cells, according to Dr. Lipton: toxins and trauma. All three factors have been associated with the onset of cancer.

With this body of knowledge comes promising news. According to Dr. Lipton, gene activity can change on a daily basis. If the perception in your mind is reflected in the chemistry of your body, and if your nervous system reads and interprets the environment and then controls the blood’s chemistry, then you can literally change the fate of your cells by altering your thoughts. In fact, Dr. Lipton’s research illustrates that by changing your perception, your mind can alter the activity of your genes and create over thirty thousand variations of products from each gene. He gives more detail by saying that the gene programs are contained within the nucleus of the cell, and you can rewrite those genetic programs through changing your blood chemistry.

In the simplest terms, this means that we need to change the way we think if we are to heal cancer. “The function of the mind is to create coherence between our beliefs and the reality we experience,” Dr. Lipton said. “What that means is that your mind will adjust the body’s biology and behavior to fit with your beliefs. If you’ve been told you’ll die in six months and your mind believes it, you most likely will die in six months. That’s called the nocebo effect, the result of a negative thought, which is the opposite of the placebo effect, where healing is mediated by a positive thought.”

That dynamic points to a three-party system: there’s the part of you that swears it doesn’t want to die (the conscious mind), trumped by the part that believes you will (the doctor’s prognosis mediated by the subconscious mind), which then throws into gear the chemical reaction (mediated by the brain’s chemistry) to make sure the body conforms to the dominant belief. (Neuroscience has recognized that the subconscious controls 95 percent of our lives.)

Now what about the part that doesn’t want to die—the conscious mind? Isn’t it impacting the body’s chemistry as well? Dr. Lipton said that it comes down to how the subconscious mind, which contains our deepest beliefs, has been programmed. It is these beliefs that ultimately cast the deciding vote.

“It’s a complex situation,” said Dr. Lipton. People have been programmed to believe that they’re victims and that they have no control. We’re programmed from the start with our mother and father’s beliefs. So, for instance, when we got sick, we were told by our parents that we had to go to the doctor because the doctor is the authority concerning our health. We all got the message throughout childhood that doctors were the authority on health and that we were victims of bodily forces beyond our ability to control. The joke, however, is that people often get better while on the way to the doctor. That’s when the innate ability for self-healing kicks in, another example of the placebo effect.