Health and Genes

HEALTH

Why do we study and educate ourselves in our understanding of optimal health? We constantly have questions that need answers to benefiting ourselves that enhance our knowledge in the health world. In holistic terms, optimal health means free of dis-ease on all levels. The principles of holism is that we distinguish between mind and body, the body and the spirits of energy, intact they are linked and interwoven to the fact that they are one. This pushes us to look at some models of self and return to the question, “Who am I?”.

We know that optimal health includes having a nourishing diet, regular exercise and feeling energized and being motivated. Allowing us to do the activities we love, following our passions and expressing our positive emotions and creativity. Positive relations in life open doors to new affirmations and intuitions. These create new patterns and beliefs towards our logic and new potentially effective ways of reprogramming negative beliefs. Forcing us to view these patterns and looking at what we want to change. This gives us an opening to explore our logical and intuitive approaches. Practicing our connection with learning and trusting our intuition using evidence, science and rational analysis.

Our minds are divided into two parts. The subconscious allows us to play back what we have learned processing information at the speed of 40 million bits per second and the conscious is our creative mind and can generate free will, processing information at the speed of 40 bits per second. In most people only 5% of mental activity is conscious. In practical terms, this means that 95% of our interpretations, decision, actions, emotion, behaviours and reactions are coming from the unobserved processing of the subconscious mind.

Core beliefs are a subtle placement of the programming laid down when we are raised by our parents. They create the foundation for what is often called “the ego”. This is an alternate self that helps us cope within the context of our environment. It’s simply conditioned by its experiences which result in us as humans, doing the best we can to fit in and stay emotionally stable while staying physically safe. By the end of our first decade of life, much of our nature has been obscured by the ego or what is called “the conditioned self”. Most of our thoughts and interpretations are from our conditioning and programming, which is persistent of our inadequacy in relation to the world. Our interpretations become accompanied by an emotional response that is felt in the body.

True fear and false fear is set and housed in the limbic system which is part of our subconscious brain. The limbic has three main structures which are the amygdala, hippocampus and thalamus. The three are in constant communication with each other. The amygdala detects threats, the hippocampus stores emotionally charged memories and the thalamus relays information to the prefrontal cortex. The cortex functions to focus one’s attention, predicting the consequences of one’s actions and anticipating events. Meaning that false fears can take over our lives. Our ego is an alternate self that helps us to cope within our environments. Self-confidence and self-beliefs become what you say.

Molecules of emotions charge our experiences. The brain's limbic system becomes activated, filtering and connecting to other information. This triggers a chain reaction release of chemicals which move rapidly toward their target. Physical responses happen when the limbic system interprets a stressful situation. This creates a chemical signal to which releases our stress hormones into the body. Our four realms (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual) work in unison, creating a personal description of the ideal health.

Physical health is when all of our organs and systems are working in harmony. Consisting of energy levels, strength and endurance. We all want to be able relax and feel energized when waking after having a sound sleep. Allowing our body to have good digestion and elimination after enjoying the meals we feed ourselves. Being pain and disease free allows our sense organs (eyes, ears, smell, taste and touch) to function for our best quality of life.

Mental health allows us the ability to focus and bring clarity to our awareness and discernment. The ability to learn, make decisions and have a good memory. Being present-moment focused keeps us calm and open minded so our thoughts can come in and be processed at a manageable pace. It lets us be curious and creative, being aware of experiences with the ability to see what's real.

Emotional health gives us the capacity to recognize and accept all emotions. The willingness to let go of categorizing emotions as good or bad. Taking responsibility for our emotions, to feel deeply, to express our emotions respectfully and letting them go. Emotions and feelings are physical and intuitive, while being very complex and involve a variety of physical and cognitive responses. Intuition is three parts; our mind, our heart and our gut. They open the door for us to create peaceful relations with anything, giving us access to our trust; “knowing without knowing”. The limbic system carries our emotional processing centre, while feelings are mental associations and reactions to the emotions that are personal which are acquired through experience. When fear is associated we suppress emotion, but facing and being with fear is an essential part of our healing process.

Spiritual health is experienced as the dimension of life when we touch into our awareness that expands past our bodies, thoughts and emotions. To access the deeper understanding and wisdom when in touch with a life purpose. Being connected with everything and everyone with feeling centered regardless the circumstances. People want to feel love, peace, stillness, grounded, quiet, trusting and open-hearted. To feel that sense of “all is well”.

“What is health?”. This is the question we should all be asking ourselves when we are seeking to enhance our optimal health. In addition, we need to reflect on the qualities we wish to enjoy with improved health and what we believe is possible. This begins to dissolve the conditioning around the limitations of the human body that cloud our perspectives. This helps us connect to the very real and exciting possibilities beneath these already conditioned beliefs.

THE GENE THEORY

Charles Robert Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), it was agreed that parents pass their genetic traits down to their children. In 1953, American Geneticist James Watson and British molecular biologist Francis Crick made their discovery about the double helix - the three dimensional structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Their research allowed researchers to unlock how genetic information is stored, copied and transferred. Each gene was made up of DNA that was responsible for making one type of human protein.

Our body's health depends on the 30 trillion cells we contain. Only 5% of the world's population has birth defects caused by genes, so as we move into the future of gene theory, we have emerged from a new science called epigenetics. Cell membranes have about 100 different receptors built within them, picking up signals from the cells environment influencing the modification of gene expression. These activate the effector proteins that send signals through the protein pathway within the cell body. As the cell pathways connect, they send the original signal at the cell membrane to the nucleus where the proteins are created.

There are three different ways to disturb the signals going to the cells: physical trauma, toxins and thoughts (through their corresponding emotional response). Physical trauma, we have some control over but toxins on the other hand, we have a fair amount of control but environmental toxins are hard to escape being a result of living in society. Many toxins were passed down in genetics from our parents, which is how heavy metals, pesticides, and chemical levels increase with each generation. The holistic nutrition field gives us many tools to avoid toxins, help our bodies eliminate accumulated toxins and then heal the potential damage they have caused. Our thoughts though, is most relevant to what we are enduring in our life's experiences. When we have an experience, our brain interprets situations as positive or negative, which then produces chemicals that are circulated throughout the body.

Coming back to the 30 trillion cells in our bodies, stem cells are known to engage consistently with the environment which is what changes their gene expression again. This confirms that they are powerful influences outside the cell. When you remove the nucleus from a cell, the cell continues to function as long as it’s needs are being met by its environments. Gene theory takes one gene to create one type of protein since there are 150,000 proteins in the human body, there should be 150,000 genes. Science has proven that each gene is capable of making many different types of protein and that external factors determine which protein is created.

Although cells are abundant and active in early life, they also exist in tissues of all living creatures throughout their entire lives and serve as an internal repair system. When cells are placed in different environment petri dishes they form different tissue: bone, muscle, fat, etc. Stem cells are known to interact constantly to their environment which change their gene expression, confirming that powerful influences exist outside of the cell itself. Research states the ability to treat devastating ailments like alzheimer's, paralysis, bone marrow transplants, anemia, blood disorders, and more ongoing studies.