A perfectly operating system.

What if our bodies were more than just physical machines that go awry every now and again? Have you ever stopped to consider this? Although we can find a physical justification for almost any and every illness, there is still something elusive about this empirical data.

If sun exposure causes skin cancer, then why doesn’t everyone who sits in the sun get skin cancer? If a diet full of wholesome vegetables and unprocessed foods keeps us healthy, why are so many conscientious eaters still sick?

Scientists would explain that it is genetics that would predispose us to the illness, with the external stimulus or factor being the trigger to the disease manifesting itself in our bodies. But then, what motivates the body’s genetics? Why do people have genetic dispositions and where do they come from?

That is usually explained as something that we are born with, something that is carried from generation to generation, our body’s weak link. But newer research in the 1980’s and 1990’s suggests another possibility.

The first transcribed work that I’ve come across that suggests that we might not be victims to mechanical failure comes from Candace Pert, Ph.D. in her book, “The Molecules of Emotion”. Dr. Pert was involved in the 1980’s with AIDS research and trying to find a cure for the disease.

While observing the way the human immunodeficiency virus attached to the cell and gave someone the moniker of being HIV+, she noticed an interesting process occurring.

She noticed that the HIV molecule was attaching itself to the same receptor site that would normally have the molecule, or neuropeptide for self-acceptance attached to it. To describe this differently, imagine a space station and a space ship docking to the space station. Now imagine that for some reason the space ship gets kicked off of the space station and gets replaced by something else, maybe an alien ship.

The inevitable question of “why?” arose and was soon answered by an article on “Tensegrity”, published in Scientific American magazine in 1996. Based on the article, there was new evidence as to how our cells operate and what caused the space ship to be replaced at the space station by the alien ship.

It was explained that there are molecules called neuropeptides that are responsible for bringing information in from the external environment. They are the monitors on the inside of the body for what is going on outside of the body. The neuropeptides attach to the cell membranes of the body, exactly like the space ship and the space station we mentioned previously. They then communicate information with the nucleus or genetic structure of the cell. The cell then is able to understand its environment, and then broadcast its directions to the rest of the cell(s) as to how to respond to the current external status. We might see this as simply as when we walk outside: if it’s 30 degrees, our bodies tell us it’s cold and we put on a jacket.

This is a perfectly operating system, which determines physical as well as hormonal (or emotional) and immune response. In other words, this is also how the body determines what hormones to produce and release into the blood stream, which determines both our emotional state and our immune state. The real question that this “Tensegrity” article addressed though, and Dr. Pert’s question was, “why does a natural, healthy neuropeptide get kicked off by a virus or another foreign invader, which ultimately leads to disease?” 

 The answer came in the simple example of a rubber band. If you take a rubber band in its normal state, there are pores (or holes) in it that molecules or sub-atomic particles could attach to. But when you stretch that rubber band, you stretch the pores (or holes) and that does not allow the same molecules or sub-atomic particles to attach.  

In other words, our cells have a nominal (or perfect) natural tension to them. If the cell is stretched, under tension, the healthy neuropeptides that would attach to them are no longer the perfect match that they were. So they are replaced, and their replacements are viruses and foreign invaders because now they are the perfect match for the pores (or holes). And according to Dr. Pert, this process is what leads to people being HIV+, and then it would later lead many of them into AIDS. Her research also found that nutrition and other health-producing activities and modalities were more effective in treatment than a drug could ever hope to be. Her funding was cut off and the project never reached conclusion.

This type or research receives neither major funding nor major attention because it’s not financially lucrative, but its ramifications are clear. We are more than a collection of parts operating as a machine with our consciousness at its seat. We are instead multi-dimensional beings, whose consciousness permeates every cell of our being and beyond, where physical, emotional, mental and spiritual factors interrelate with information on a constant and ongoing basis. Therefore, to suggest that we are victims to some physical disease that has no connection to our emotional or mental state is to deny the essence of who we are.

Did You Know…?

By Laura Abulafia, MHS It’s summer time! You know what that means… good food, vacations, and time spent in the sun. But did you know that most sun screens have toxic chemicals in them?

After analyzing 500 sunscreens, including major brands like Hawaiian Tropic, Banana Boat and Neutrogena, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) was only able to recommend 39 of them in this year's sunscreen report released in June 2010 -- a mere eight percent. That means a whopping 461 of them either don't provide adequate protection or contain potentially hazardous ingredients, or both. 

Many of the products looked at didn't live up to their flashy slogans and packaging. Sunscreens with an SPF higher than 50 can give a false sense of security, and there is startling new data linking vitamin A to accelerated development of skin tumors and lesions. EWG’s 2010 Sunscreen Guide will help you figure out what works and what's hype by showing you how more than 500 different products rank. For more information, visit www.ewg.org
 

The sum of the whole is greater than its individual parts.

In the 1950’s a small in Northeastern Pennsylvania town called Roseta drew overnight attention. It appeared that the people of Roseta had mortality rates that were incredibly low, as compared to surrounding towns or even to the rest of the United States. There were 30-40% fewer heart attacks among its citizens, despite there being no discernable difference between it and any of its neighboring towns. It even had the same water supply as its neighbors.

Scientists and researchers descended upon this small town in order to discover its citizens’ secrets, expecting to find people who exercised regularly, ate well, had lower stress levels, were in great physical shape, were calmer, and had some sort of stress relieving lifestyle.

Instead they found the opposite. The town consisted of immigrant Italian families who were consistently overweight, ate pork regularly, drank wine with meals, shouted at each other from across the dinner table, and did nothing that scientists before could have attributed to their longevity. Their DNA was examined to see whether they had some sort of “special genetics” that would allow them to live so long, despite their unhealthy lifestyle choices. Finding nothing noteworthy, scientists and researchers were baffled.

The finding that researchers at last came to was that it was the community environment that people lived in that had more to do with their health, happiness and longevity than all the little minutia of what they ate in what proportions, how many hours they spent on a treadmill and how much yoga or meditation they practiced on a daily basis.

That is not to say that healthy practices do not influence a healthy, happy life. But when you split apart elements of life and examine each variable separately from the rest of life, the factors don’t add up. Reductionistic science is just that. A reductionist breaks the whole into parts and examines the parts as separate entities from one another. The whole is simply the sum of all its parts and no more. In other words, the heart is healthier when it gets a minimum average of 20 minutes of cardiovascular activity, 3 to 4 times weekly. But what happens to the heart function of a woman who’s just lost a child?

Author Michael Crichton (of Jurassic Park fame) was also a graduate of Harvard Medical School in the 1970’s. During his residency, he decided he had no interest in practicing of medicine, so he decided to use his time to interview people. When he asked men who’d survived heart attacks why they felt they had the attack, each one answered that they were either under severe stress over some family or career situation or that someone had just broken their heart. When asked why they survived, each one shared that there was someone they survived for. Not one of these men mentioned their cholesterol levels.

Vitalism on the other hand views the whole as greater than its individual parts alone. It is the function of all the parts together that creates life, and all the cells in our bodies are in constant communication with one another, responding to life from moment to moment.

For the same reason that the residents of Roseta, Pennsylvania, some of the healthiest people in America in spite of their unhealthy dietary and lifestyle habits, knew the key to health and longevity that baffled scientists for so long. They had an innate understanding of the concepts of vitalism in their day-to-day lives. They understood the value of family and relationships, despite the stresses they incur. The whole of the community was important for the health of each individual.

Simply stated, it’s not as much about the details, but more about how you do your life. Eating an unhealthy meat and pasta dinner in the company of family and friends, with a glass of wine, while screaming across the room does more for your wellbeing than sitting alone and eating the healthiest foods.

And while we realize now that life does not mimic an experiment in a Petri dish, we are just at the cusp of realizing how truly responsive we are to all facets of our environment. Take a step back for a moment and examine your own lifestyle choices. Are you focused on the minutia, or “sweating the small stuff” in reductionist fashion? Or are you aware of the interconnectedness of things and the general gestalt of things in a vitalistic way? You may find that happiness is as simple as letting some of those consuming details go. 

Did you know?

By contributing author Laura Abulafia, MHS 

It is well known that many factors can contribute to your personal health. This includes diet and exercise, genetic inheritance and lifestyle habits, and, significantly, your emotional and spiritual life. There are things we can do to stay healthy on a day to day basis: eat high quality foods, drink clean water, breath clean air free of cigarette smoke or other air contaminants like mold, and take care of the internal body.

xposure to a wide range of potentially harmful chemicals from conception to death is unavoidable. There are about 80,000 registered chemicals in use in United States. Approximately 3,000 chemicals are produced in quantities greater than 1 million pounds per year. Health effects are not always documented for these chemicals, and when they are, there is often weak regulation of these chemicals.

Some of these chemicals are neurotoxic, effecting the developing brain and the nervous system, and other chemicals are linked with diseases and disorders such as cancer, learning disabilities, autism, asthma, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, and even obesity. 

Toxins can accumulate in the body in many places: your organs, fatty tissues, brain and bones are all susceptible to environmental exposures. Doing something protective of your health that safely removes toxic buildup can make tremendous improvements in overall health. Whether it’s choosing to eat organic, unprocessed foods, or minimizing exposure to toxic cleaning agents or plastics, you can take small steps that add to your healthy lifestyle in a variety of ways.

The human body has an incredible ability to heal and we can significantly impact our quality of life through taking simple steps toward health. The body wants to be healthy, and there are ways that you can support that through your daily habits.

It is important to support the body’s natural ability to heal itself, especially if your personal genetic inheritance is fragile, your nutrition is not optimal, or when stress and lack of exercise threaten your quality of life. Keeping a healthy body in spite of these toxic exposures is an essential way to maintain a safe and healthy life. Some of these chemicals are neurotoxic, effecting the developing brain and the nervous system, and other chemicals are linked with diseases and disorders such as cancer, learning disabilities, autism, asthma, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, and even obesity. 

It’s Not Just About Your Spine. It’s About Your Life

National health care has passed. For anyone who has lived under the guise of a national health care system, you already know that it has its good points and it has its bad points. The one thing clear however is that there is a difference between “health” care and “sick” care.

The majority of national health care programs are based on “sick” care services, which is anything from early detection of to treatment of full-blown disease, and of course crisis care. These are all well and extremely necessary, but the President has already commented that recreating a system like that in this country will further bankrupt us.

Some estimates for the numbers of people with autism alone in this country have grown from 2 in 10,000 births in 1987 to 1 in 110 this year. What this translates into financially is that as these people grow older they will be or may already be reliant upon the government and national health care system to support them. This is a great expense without the revenue to support it. And this is only taking one demographic into account. As doctors are further overworked and underpaid for their services, quality of care diminishes, and we are left with a system that handles crisis or “sick” care wonderfully but has no time or money to handle health care.

That makes it our responsibility to manage and be responsible for our own health care. Besides, in the end we are the ones who have to live with the decisions we make about our bodies and our lives and how we choose to or not to take care of ourselves. My objective in the upcoming months is to bring you compelling information regarding health care and health care decisions, to inform you and enlighten you as to what decisions are within your power to make and the potential benefits and/ or consequences involved. I will present not only my own information, but information from others who I trust to be authorities in their respective fields in hoping to assist you in making your own best choices for your and your family’s best health. 

What is health?

Before we can proceed any further, we must examine this question. Why? Because if we don’t know where we are going, how will we know if we’re choosing the correct path? We can probably all agree on these 4 fundamental aspects or principles of health:

1. Good energy. We sleep well, wake up alert and refreshed, function during the day, and then sleep well again.

2. Mental Clarity. We perceive our environment in a non-hostile way and are free of fears, phobias and anxieties.

3. Emotional Stability. We can pass through a full range of emotions.

4. Unlimited Physical Expression. Experienced joyfully and painlessly, we should not “feel” our physical expression.

Any definition of health that I’ve ever found has in some way included all 4 of these principles. It would be reasonable to suggest that any modality or lifestyle choice that attempts to simultaneously address these 4 components builds health. And any that looks to fix one or these without regard for the other is not health care, but some form or crisis or sick care. Take a look at some of the choices that you are currently making in your health care decisions. Would they be categorized as health care or sick care? Do you have an intended outcome with these modalities, and if so what is it? How will you know when you’ve arrived at it? And as a result of the care you receive, will there be anything fundamentally changed within you? Did You Know…? Autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, intellectual disability (formerly termed mental retardation), lowered IQ and other disorders of learning, development, and behavior are highly prevalent among American children. Between 1997 and 2006, rates of ADHD diagnosis increased an average of 3% per year. Today, approximately 4.5 million children have been diagnosed with ADHD. The lifetime prevalence of learning disabilities in United States (U.S.) children is approximately 9.7%, according to a 2007 Pediatrics article. According to a 1994 study, approximately 16% of U.S. children have a developmental disability, and research shows increasing trends. Since the early 1990s alone, reported cases of autism spectrum disorders have increased tenfold. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now estimates that one in 110 U.S. eight-yearolds have autism spectrum disorder, with an increase of 57% between 2002 and 2006. While increased awareness and improved diagnostic criteria undoubtedly played a role in the current figures, studies controlling for those factors infer that other culprits, such as chemical contaminants and geneenvironment interactions, are likely to play a role in the rising incidence of learning and developmental disabilities in the U.S. Contributing Author: Laura Abulafia, MHS This is not to say that sick care is a negative thing. This is to say that knowing what your objectives are and knowing what you choose to arrive at your objectives gives a greater chance of success toward obtaining your goals. We also gain a greater level of satisfaction in knowing what to expect and knowing when our expectations have been met, and especially in knowing where our expectations are cannot be met by our modality of choice. 

Did You Know…? 

Contributing Author: Laura Abulafia, MH

Autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, intellectual disability (formerly termed mental retardation), lowered IQ and other disorders of learning, development, and behavior are highly prevalent among American children.

Between 1997 and 2006, rates of ADHD diagnosis increased an average of 3% per year. Today, approximately 4.5 million children have been diagnosed with ADHD.

The lifetime prevalence of learning disabilities in United States (U.S.) children is approximately 9.7%, according to a 2007 Pediatrics article. According to a 1994 study, approximately 16% of U.S. children have a developmental disability, and research shows increasing trends. Since the early 1990s alone, reported cases of autism spectrum disorders have increased tenfold.

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now estimates that one in 110 U.S. eight-yearolds have autism spectrum disorder, with an increase of 57% between 2002 and 2006. While increased awareness and improved diagnostic criteria undoubtedly played a role in the current figures, studies controlling for those factors infer that other culprits, such as chemical contaminants and geneenvironment interactions, are likely to play a role in the rising incidence of learning and developmental disabilities in the U.S.

Contributing Author: Laura Abulafia, MH