Perception is Reality

Imagine a rollercoaster.  The ride is an event that is essentially the same every time it runs, but the experience can be totally different depending on the perception of the rider.  One person may find it exhilarating and exciting while the next person may find it a terrifying and a miserable experience.  Both are right!  The important point in this example is that the physiology expressed as a result of each person’s experience will be totally different.  This is the basic premise of epigenetics – our experiences, environment, and perception has an effect on our physiology and even alters the expression of our genes.  This was the topic of a study and article published in the journal Pacific Standard.

In the study, the researchers were interested in the effect our social life has on our genes.  Their premise was to determine if there was a difference in the genes of people who were lonely versus those who were not lonely and had adequate social networks.  The researchers reported that our genes are not a blueprint as we were taught in high school biology.  Rather, the expression of our genes is what it’s all about and this gene expression changes as a result of the life we live.  In the study, they found “sharply different genetic expression responses” depending on whether a person felt lonely or connected.  The lonely people had less favorable gene expressions associated with inflammatory immune responses.  As I’ve reported in the past, these inflammatory responses are linked to every chronic disease process out there.  This article went further to compare high stress level to this social connectedness factor.  We all know chronic stress is linked to inflammation and disease, but it may surprise you that social isolation is the strongest established risk factor for chronic disease.  The researchers continued, “You cannot change your genes, but you can change the way your genes behave.  By adjusting your environment, you can adjust your gene activity.”  But wait!  There’s more.  Just like my rollercoaster analogy, perception was more important than reality.  In other words, those that perceived themselves to be alone and lacking social interaction had a worse gene expression, more consistent with chronic disease whether they were truly socially isolated or not.  The researchers concluded, “Environment and experience are not the same.  Two people may share the same environment, but not the same experience.  Your experiences today will influence the molecular composition of your body for the next two or three months; perhaps the rest of your life.”

A couple points can be drawn from this.  Most importantly, you are not broken or victim to your genes.  By changing your lifestyle, you can change your health and even the expression of the genes you’ve been dealt.  What you eat, drink, and breathe, as well as how you exercise, sleep, and think have a bigger impact on your health than anything else.  Secondly, make time for social interaction.  Join a club, get involved in a church group, or simply reconnect with old friends or family.  Honor those relationships and work on enhancing your social connectedness.

Inflammatory Insights

In the past I’ve vilified inflammation and pointed out that inflammation is at the root of every disease.  However, I’ve also been known to point out that the body is always smart and most everything that occurs inside the body is actually a perfect response to a stimulus or stressor from our environment.  Thus, if the latter is true, there must be a reason for the redness, swelling, and pain associated with inflammation.  In this article I’d like to point out some of the benefits of this natural reaction of the body and provide strategies for dealing with chronic inflammation.

The inflammatory response is a natural defense mechanism that is triggered whenever body tissues are damaged or threatened by trauma, irritating chemical toxins or viral/bacterial infection. Most of the body’s defense tools are located in the blood and inflammation causes swelling and stretching of the blood vessels so that white bloods cells, large proteins focused on tissue repair and different hormones can move into the tissue to initiate the healing process.  The swelling also helps to dilute any harmful chemicals in the area and bring in large amounts of oxygen and nutrients.  Acute inflammation has even been shown to be important for immune function including increasing the body’s ability to mediate T-lymphocytes which are the white bloods cells associated with fighting infection and eliminating cancer cells.

The problem occurs when acute inflammation becomes chronic as this is a sign that the body is not healing appropriately.  This phenomenon is much more common with people that have a lower level of health due to high stress, poor sleep, lack of exercise, poor diet, toxicity, and a generally weakened immune and/or nervous system function.  The typical approach to treat chronic inflammation is to use corticosteroids.  Dr. Andrew Weil, in his book Spontaneous Healing, reports “I consider them (steroids) dangerous drugs, much misunderstood, abused and over prescribed. Steroids are toxic, cause dependence, suppress, rather than cure disease, and reduce the chance of healing by natural treatment. Moreover, they weaken immunity.”

My experience is that you have to start by restoring health to the body in order to heal from chronic inflammation.  First, get rid of the chemical toxins by doing a detox and cleaning up the diet while drinking large amounts of water.  This is imperative!  Next, supplement with an omega 3 such as fish oil, heal the gut with probiotics, and take in adequate minerals or green food supplements to alkalize the body’s pH.  Focus on stress reducing methods such as meditation and yoga and make proper sleep a priority.  Chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, cold laser, and physical therapy can often be of huge benefit.  Finally, once you start feeling better, start off slow, but commit to regular exercise to finish it off.  While there are other factors that can help, this is a basic formula for recovering from any chronic inflammatory condition.

The Master Mineral

I’ve reported the importance of minerals in the past, citing that most vitamins do nothing by themselves unless the appropriate minerals are there to activate and facilitate them.  We should be getting all our vitamins and minerals naturally from foods grown in healthy soil in the form of organic fruits and vegetables.  Unfortunately, I don’t see many who consume enough of these foods.  Furthermore, many chemicals including those found in processed “junk” foods and prescription drugs are known to deplete the body of these vitamins and minerals.  One crucial mineral that an estimated 80% of the population is deficient in is magnesium.

Magnesium is involved in over 300 metabolic processes in the body and is considered to be the “master mineral”.  For one thing magnesium is necessary to move calcium into bone to prevent osteoporosis.  It is also an anti-inflammatory mineral that protects against arthritis, Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure, heart problems, and diabetes.  Even with its importance, many Americans are not getting enough magnesium.  While blood testing is necessary to know for certain, here are some signs that you might have a magnesium deficiency:  calcium deficiency, muscle cramping, weakness and tremors, nausea, anxiety and confusion, high blood pressure, constipation, respiratory problems, dizziness, fatigue, poor memory, and migraine headaches.  Obviously, these symptoms can be associated with numerous other problems.  However, if you find that you experience several of these, doing a trial run of magnesium supplementation might be a good idea.

When supplementing with the mineral, I recommend a magnesium citrate like Natural Calm. It is in a powder form and can be drank and will absorb more readily. It is almost impossible to get too much magnesium, however, if you do take in too much you will likely experience diarrhea and possibly heart-rate irregularities. In some cases, a magnesium citrate sensitivity may cause bowel cramping and digestive distress.  If this occurs, I recommend using our Magnesium Glycinate supplement instead of Natural Calm. While supplementation is effective, ideally you should be getting magnesium along with all your other vitamins and minerals from real food.  Here are some food sources high in magnesium: pumpkin, sunflower, and sesame seeds, black beans, spinach squash, okra, along with cashews and almonds.  We’ve used magnesium in our office for years mostly as a natural reliever of muscle spasms and cramping.  In doing this, I’ve found many people to get relief of high blood pressure, constipation, and migraine headaches.  Always remember that nature has an innate way of providing us with what we need.  Eat the right foods to get the appropriate vitamins and minerals and most symptoms, ailments and diseases could be prevented.

Hormone Help

Can we talk about hormones?  Your body has two primary ways of maintaining a state of balance and well-being that is known as homeostasis.  First, your brain communicates with the body electrically through the nervous system to control all the other cells, tissues and organs.  This method has a faster response time, but is generally for short-term regulation.  The second method of communication is the endocrine or hormone system.  Hormones are chemical messengers that are released into the blood to travel to receptor sites on other tissues, glands, or organs.  This method takes a little longer for a response, but the results are intended to last longer as well.  In a sentence, hormones alter our physiology by turning things on and turning things off.  There’s a great deal of attention being paid to hormones lately and I believe it’s justified – all our physiology and our ability to maintain health over disease can be tied to the balance of these tiny chemicals.  With this in mind, I found a couple recent articles that report how we could impact our own hormones.

When you study hormones in physiology class, the first thing you learn is that the interaction of these numerous chemicals is rather complex and that they are all ultimately coordinated by a portion of the brain known as the hypothalamus.  Modern science has proven that the hypothalamus is the part of the brain that responds to our environment to help us adapt to our current needs.  Because of this, the hypothalamus is influenced by our diet through what we eat, drink, and breathe, our level of activity and exercise, our sleep, and possibly most importantly our thoughts and stress level.  Thus, our lifestyle has an enormous effect on how hormones are regulated and how our bodies are performing.  For instance, exercise and movement of our joints and muscles literally shuts off the stress response in the brain and changes our hormones.  Stress reduction techniques such as yoga, meditation, and prayer have shown enormous benefits in reducing the stress hormones as does proper sleep.  I recently found some foods that appear to have a direct effect on our hormones as well.  For instance grains and sugars decrease the levels of seven of our most important hormones!  This is huge!  Likewise, alcohol decreases your HGH (human growth hormone).  Just one drink can reduce HGH by 75%.  This is the stuff that helps build muscle at the expense of fat.  On the flip side, foods and supplements with magnesium will increase HGH and other sex hormones such as testosterone.  Even though they were vilified in the past, healthy proteins such as organic beef, chicken, and fish and even healthy fats such as egg yolks, lard, and butter have been shown to improve progesterone and DHEA.  This last hormone is a steroid produced in your adrenal glands that helps reduce premature aging and mental stress.  The importance of these natural fats and proteins is one of the reasons for the popularity of the Paleo diet.  Remember too that all our fat soluble vitamins, especially vitamins D and A help to regulate hormones as well. 

This should serve as more evidence that we have great influence over our entire physiology through the choices we make.  I cannot emphasize enough the importance of proper exercise, sleep, and thinking as well as becoming more aware of what you put in your body at mealtime and understanding the ramifications of those choices.