The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles

by Bruce H. Lipton

In the experiment, one group of yellow, obese, agouti mothers received methyl-group-rich supplements available in health food stores: folic acid, vitamin B12, betaine, and choline. Methyl-rich supplements were chosen because a number of studies have shown that the methyl chemical group is involved with epigenetic modifications. When methyl groups attach to a gene’s DNA, it changes the way regulatory chromosomal proteins bind to the DNA molecule. If the proteins bind too tightly to the gene, the protein sleeve cannot be removed and the gene cannot be read. Methylating DNA can silence or modify gene activity.

Buscar suplemento con esto. methyl-group-rich supplements available in health food stores: folic acid, vitamin B12, betaine, and choline.

The University’s photo, shown above, is striking. Though the two mice are genetically identical, they are radically different in appearance: one mouse is lean and brown and the other mouse is obese and yellow. What you can’t see in the picture is that the obese mouse is diabetic while its genetically identical counterpart is healthy.

only 5 percent of cancer and cardiovascular patients can attribute their disease directly to heredity. (Willett 2002; Silverman 2004) While the media made a big hoopla over the discovery of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer genes, they failed to emphasize that 95 percent of breast cancers are not due to inherited genes.

Twenty years after my mentor Irv Konigsberg’s advice to first consider the environment when your cells are ailing, I finally got it. DNA does not control biology, and the nucleus itself is not the brain of the cell. Just like you and me, cells are shaped by where they live. In other words, it’s the environment, stupid.

U.S. News: “Environment Trumps Genes at Shaping Immune System: Study.” (Preidt 2015) From ScienceDaily: “Environment, not genes, dictates human immune variation, study finds.” (Goldman 2015)

Here’s another fact I often use in my lectures as a cautionary tale about overemphasizing the roles of genes: the same gene used to code for the protein keratin found in hair also provides for all of the following structures: skin, nails, claws, hooves, and horns. The gene that encodes the synthesis of individual keratin protein building blocks does not control how those keratin molecules will be used. So protein-encoding genes do provide for cellular building blocks, but do not determine an organism’s structure or its complexity. That leaves us with a fundamental question: what does? Figuring out an answer to that question leads us to another completely unexpected outcome of the Genome Project: genes that encode a cell’s protein building blocks constitute less than 2 percent of the genome’s total amount of DNA, so the vast majority of DNA does not contribute to the cell’s protein population. The belief that this DNA lacked function led Francis Crick to label it as “junk DNA.” That term, though readily accepted by the public, irritates large numbers of biologists who cannot fathom the idea that cells carry massive amounts of “useless” DNA. That’s why geneticists prefer to use the term “dark matter” when referring to noncoding DNA.

In an analogous biology construction set, genes are the physical building parts, and noncoding DNA is the “instruction sheet” on how to assemble specific models (i.e., animals and plants) from an assortment of the same parts. Like the Erector set, gene-derived protein parts can be assembled, disassembled, and reassembled into a variety of different organisms. The body plans for each organism, encoded in the dark DNA, are directly connected to the dynamic environment via epigenetic mechanisms that interpret, translate, and control the activity of the protein-coding genes.

Telomeres prevent a loss of protein-encoding information during gene replication by providing a noncoding stretch of DNA whose loss will not affect the protein’s blueprint. This extra length of DNA allows the polymerase “train” to lose a piece of DNA without compromising the region containing the protein code. The length of the telomere extension determines how many times DNA can be copied before polymerase clipping cuts into the gene’s protein code. When frequent cell divisions deplete telomere extensions, subsequent copies of the DNA produce dysfunctional proteins.

But there is a catch! Life experiences can stimulate or suppress telomerase activity. For example, stressful prenatal developmental experiences, childhood abuse (both verbal and physical), domestic violence, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nutritional deficiencies, and lack of love all inhibit telomerase activity. These factors contribute to the onset of disease and a shortened life span. In contrast, exercise, good nutrition, a positive outlook on life, living in happiness and gratitude, being in service, and experiencing love, especially self-love, all enhance telomerase activity and promote a long and healthy life. (Blackburn and Epel 2012, Stetka 2014)

As I’ll talk about in more depth in later chapters, the primary influence controlling telomerase activity is the mind, which is influenced by the programming we acquired before age seven. And, as I’ll discuss, YES . . . we can consciously empower ourselves by actively enhancing our own telomerase. And, YES, because I can’t repeat this enough, factoring in all the wonderful research that has been done in the last decade: it’s the environment, stupid!

you will also understand how wrong the tabloids were in 1953. The secret of life does not lie in the famed double helix. Insight into the secret of life lies in understanding the elegantly simple biological mechanisms of the magical membrane—the mechanisms by which your body translates environmental signals into behavior.

Polar molecules include water and things that dissolve in water. Nonpolar molecules include oil and substances that dissolve in oil; there are no positive or negative charges among their atoms. Remember the adage “water and oil don’t mix”? Neither do oily nonpolar and watery polar molecules.

Receptor “antennas” can also read vibrational energy fields such as light, sound, and radio frequencies. The antennas on these “energy” receptors vibrate like tuning forks. If an energy vibration in the environment resonates with a receptor’s antenna, it will alter the protein’s charge, causing the receptor to change shape. (Tsong 1989) I’ll cover this more completely in the next chapter, but I’d like to point out now that because receptors can read energy fields, the notion that only physical molecules can impact cell physiology is outmoded. Biological behavior can be controlled by invisible forces, including thought, as well as it can be controlled by physical molecules like penicillin, a fact that provides the scientific underpinning for pharmaceutical-free energy medicine.

Receptor proteins are remarkable, but on their own they do not impact the behavior of the cell. While the receptor provides an awareness of environmental signals, the cell still has to engage in an appropriate, life-sustaining response; that is the venue of the effector proteins. Taken together, the receptor-effector proteins are a stimulus-response mechanism comparable to the reflex action that doctors typically test during physical examinations.

different kinds of behavior-controlling effector proteins because there are lots of jobs that need to be done for the smooth functioning of the cell. Transport proteins, for example, include an extensive family of channel proteins that shuttle molecules and information from one side of the membrane barrier to the

Sodium-potassium ATPase not only uses up a lot of energy, it also creates energy as surely as store-bought batteries provide energy for flashlights (at least until you forget to change them before the big storm). Actually, the energy-producing activity of sodium-potassium ATPase is a lot better than the batteries your kids wear out because it turns the cell into a constantly recharging biological battery.

Once I understood how IMPs worked, I had to conclude that the cell’s operations are primarily molded by its interaction with the environment, not by its genetic code. There is no doubt that the DNA blueprints stored in the nucleus are remarkable molecules, which have been accumulated over three billion years of evolution. But as remarkable as these DNA blueprints are, they do not “control” the operations of the cell. Logically, genes cannot preprogram a cell or organism’s life because cell survival depends on the ability to dynamically adjust to an ever-changing environment. The membrane’s function of interacting “intelligently” with the environment to produce behavior makes it the true brain of the cell. Let’s put the membrane to the same “brain” test to which we put the nucleus. When you destroy its membrane, the cell dies just as you would if your brain were removed. Even if you leave the membrane intact, destroying only its receptor proteins, which can easily be done with digestive enzymes in the lab, the cell becomes “brain-dead.” It is comatose because it no longer receives the environmental signals necessary for the operation of the cell. The cell also becomes comatose when the membrane’s receptor proteins are left intact and its effector proteins are immobilized.

To exhibit “intelligent” behavior, cells need a functioning membrane with both receptor (awareness) and effector (action) proteins. These protein complexes are the fundamental units of cellular intelligence. Technically they may be referred to as units of “perception.” The definition of perception is “awareness of the elements of environment through physical sensation.” The first part of the definition describes the function of receptor IMPs. The second part of the definition, the creation of a “physical sensation,” sums up the role of the effector proteins.

To review, the functions required for a single cell to stay alive are the same functions required by a community of cells to stay alive. But cells started to specialize when they formed multicellular organisms. In multicellular communities, there is a division of labor. That division of labor is evident in the tissues and organs that carry out specialized functions.

“The membrane is a liquid crystal semiconductor with gates and channels.”

“A chip is a crystal semiconductor with gates and channels.” For the first second or two I was struck by the fact that the chip and cell membrane shared the same technical definition. I spent several more intense seconds comparing and contrasting biomembranes with silicon semiconductors. I was momentarily stunned when I realized that the identical nature of their definitions was not a coincidence. The cell membrane was indeed a structural and functional equivalent (homologue) of a silicon chip!

This device, created for the study, demonstrates that the cell membrane not only looks like a chip but also functions like one. Cornell and associates successfully turned a biological cell membrane into a digital-readout computer chip.

The first big-deal insight that comes from such an exercise is that computers and cells are programmable. The second corollary insight is that the programmer lies outside the computer/cell. Biological behavior and gene activity are dynamically linked to information from the environment, which is downloaded into the cell. The point: a cell is a “programmable chip” whose behavior and genetic activity are primarily controlled by environmental signals, not genes.

I had been trained as a nucleus-centered biologist as surely as Copernicus had been trained as an Earth-centered astronomer, so it was with a jolt that I realized that the gene-containing nucleus does not program the cell. Environmental data is entered into the cell/computer via the membrane’s receptors, which represent the cell’s “keyboard.” Receptors trigger the membrane’s effector proteins, which act as the cell/computer’s “Central Processing Unit” (CPU).

We are the drivers of our own biology, just as I am the driver of this word processing program. We have the ability to edit the data we enter into our biocomputers, just as surely as I can choose the words I type. When we understand how IMPs control biology, we become masters of our fate, not victims of our genes.

I was delighted to learn that scientists cannot understand the mysteries of the universe using only linear thinking.

I realized that quantum physics is relevant to biology and that biologists are committing a glaring, scientific error by ignoring its laws. Physics, after all, is the foundation for all the sciences, yet we biologists almost universally rely on the outmoded, albeit tidier, Newtonian version of how the world works. We stick to the physical world of Newton and ignore the invisible quantum world of Einstein, in which matter is actually made up of energy and there are no absolutes. At the atomic level, matter does not even exist with certainty; it only exists as a tendency to exist. All my certitudes about biology and physics were shattered!

Within another ten years, physicists abandoned their belief in a Newtonian, material universe because they had come to realize that the concept of matter is an illusion, for they now recognized that everything in the Universe is made out of energy. Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating; each atom is like a wobbly spinning top that radiates energy. Because each atom has its own specific energy signature (wobble), assemblies of atoms (molecules) collectively radiate their own identifying energy patterns. So every material structure in the universe, including you and me, radiates a unique energy signature.

E = mc2. Simply stated, this equation reveals that energy (E) = matter (m, mass) multiplied by the speed of light squared (c2). Einstein revealed that we do not live in a universe with discrete, physical objects separated by dead space. The Universe is one indivisible, dynamic whole in which energy and matter are so deeply entangled it is impossible to consider them as independent elements.

The mapping of these information network pathways underscores the dangers of prescription drugs. We can now see why pharmaceutical drugs come with information sheets listing voluminous side effects that range from irritating to deadly. 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.

pharmaceutical estrogen therapy does not focus the drug’s effects on the intended target tissues. The drug also impacts and disturbs the estrogen receptors of the heart, the blood vessels, and the nervous system. Synthetic hormone replacement therapy has been shown to have disturbing side effects that result in cardiovascular disease and neural dysfunctions such as strokes. (Shumaker, et al, 2003; Wassertheil-Smoller, et al, 2003; Anderson, et al, 2003; Cauley, et al, 2003; Bath and Gray 2005)

A conventional notion regarding the difference between the two physics is that quantum mechanics more specifically applies to molecular and atomic realms while Newtonian laws apply to higher levels of organization, such as organ systems, people, or populations of people. The manifestation of a disease, such as cancer, may show up at a macro level when you can see and feel a tumor. However, the processes that instigated the cancer were initiated at the molecular level within the affected progenitor cells. In fact, most biological dysfunctions (except injuries due to physical trauma) start at the level of a cell’s molecules and ions. Hence the need for a biology that integrates both quantum and Newtonian mechanics.

We know that living organisms must receive and interpret environmental signals in order to stay alive. In fact, survival is directly related to the speed and efficiency of signal transfer. The speed of electromagnetic energy signals is 186,000 miles per second, while the speed of a diffusible chemical is considerably less than one centimeter per second. Energy signals are a hundred times more efficient and infinitely faster than physical chemical signaling. What kind of signaling would your trillion-celled community prefer? Do the math!

Meanwhile, the media essentially avoids the issue of deaths by medicine by directing our attention to the dangers of illicit drugs. They admonish us that using drugs to escape life’s problems is not the way to resolve one’s issue. Funny . . . I was just going to use that exact sentence to describe my concerns about the overuse of legal drugs. Are they dangerous? Ask the people who died last year. Using prescription drugs to silence a body’s symptoms enables us to ignore personal involvement we may have with the onset of those symptoms. The overuse of prescription drugs provides a vacation from personal responsibility.

Our drug mania reminds me of a job at an auto dealership I held while in graduate school. At 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, an irate woman came into the shop. Her car’s “service engine” light was flashing, even though her car had already been repaired for that same problem several times. At 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, who wants to work on a balky problem and deal with a furious customer? Everyone was quiet, except for one mechanic who said, “I’ll take care of it.” He drove the car back into the bay, got in behind the dashboard, removed the bulb from the signal light and threw it away. Then he opened a can of soda and lit a cigarette. After a suitable time, during which the customer thought he was actually fixing the car, the mechanic returned and told the woman her car was ready. Thrilled to see that the warning light had stopped flashing, she happily drove off into the sunset. Though the cause of the problem was still present, the symptom was gone. Similarly, pharmaceutical drugs suppress the body’s symptoms but most never address the cause of the problem.

Para hablar de drogas con las personas

Energy fields influencing cell membrane receptors, such as those controlling Ras proteins, represent the interface wherein environmental signals control cell functions. Experimental manipulation of environmental EMF (electromagnetic field) frequencies has been shown to profoundly influence the activity of the cell’s sodium (Na+), potassium (K+ATPase), and calcium (Ca2+ATPase) ion protein channels. (Guan and Reed 2012) Since these membrane proteins control the cell’s electrical activities, including the development and maintenance of the cell’s membrane potential, environmental electromagnetic fields can shape the health and fate of biological systems. For example, it is now well established that microwave radiation, associated with cell phones and other electronic devices, interferes with and disrupts normal cell behaviors and can possibly lead to dysfunction and disease. (Kesari, et al, 2013)

The fact is that harnessing the power of your mind can be more effective than the drugs you have been programmed to believe you need.

You need more than just “positive thinking” to harness control of your body and your life.

the conscious and the subconscious, are interdependent. The conscious mind—which represents the seat of our personal identity, source, or spirit—is the creative mind. It can see into the future, review the past, or disconnect from the present moment as it solves problems in our head. In its creative capacity, the conscious mind holds our wishes, desires, and aspirations for our lives. It is the mind that conjures up our “positive thoughts.” In contrast, the subconscious mind is primarily a repository of stimulus-response tapes derived from instincts and learned experiences. The subconscious mind is fundamentally habitual; it will play the same behavioral responses to life’s signals over and over again, much to our chagrin.

When it comes to sheer neurological processing abilities, the subconscious mind is more than a million times more powerful than the conscious mind.

I believe the greatest problem we face is that we think we are running our lives with the wishes, desires, and aspirations created by our conscious mind. When we struggle or fail to obtain our goals, we are generally led to conclude that we are victims of outside forces preventing us from reaching our destination. However, neuroscience has now established that the conscious mind runs the show, at best, only about 5 percent of the time. It turns out that the programs acquired by the subconscious mind shape 95 percent or more of our life experiences. (Szegedy-Maszak 2005) Since subconscious programs operate without the necessity of observation or control by the conscious mind, we are completely unaware that our subconscious minds are making our everyday decisions. Our lives are essentially a printout of our subconscious programs, behaviors that were fundamentally acquired from others (our parents, family, and community) before we were six years old. As psychologists recognize, a majority of these developmental programs are limiting and disempowering.

Creemos que conscientemente manejamos nuestra vida cuando la realidad es que es a través de el inconsciente como se llevan nuestra vida

As more complex animals evolved, specialized cells took over the job of monitoring and organizing the flow of the behavior regulating signal molecules. These cells provided a distributed nerve network and central information processor, a brain. The brain’s function is to coordinate the dialogue of signal molecules within the community. Consequently, in a community of cells, each cell must relinquish control to the informed decisions of its awareness authority, the brain. The brain controls the behavior of the body’s cells. This is a very important point to consider as we blame the cells of our organs and tissues for the health issues we experience in our lives.

In higher, more aware life forms, the brain developed a specialization that enabled the whole community to tune into the status of its regulatory signals. The evolution of the limbic system provided a unique mechanism that converted the chemical communication signals into sensations that could be experienced by all of the cells in the community. Our conscious mind experiences these signals as emotions. The conscious mind not only “reads” the flow of the cellular coordinating signals that comprise the body’s “mind”; it can also generate emotions, which are manifested through the controlled release of regulatory signals by the nervous system.

In Molecules of Emotion, Pert revealed how her study of information-processing receptors on nerve cell membranes led her to discover that the same “neural” receptors were present on most, if not all, of the body’s cells. Her elegant experiments established that the “mind” was not focused in the head but was distributed via signal molecules to the whole body. As importantly, her work emphasized that emotions were not only derived through a feedback of the body’s environmental information. Through self-consciousness, the mind can use the brain to generate “molecules of emotion” and override the system. While proper use of consciousness can bring health to an ailing body, inappropriate unconscious control of emotions can easily make a healthy body diseased,

The limbic system offered a major evolutionary advance through its ability to sense and coordinate the flow of behavior-regulating signals within the cellular community. As the internal signal system evolved, its greater efficiency enabled the brain to increase in size. Multicellular organisms gained increasingly more cells that were dedicated to responding to an ever-wider variety of external environmental signals. While individual cells can respond to simple sensory perceptions such as red, round, aromatic, and sweet, the extra brainpower available in multicellular animals enables them to combine those simple sensations into a higher level of complexity and perceive “apple.” Fundamental reflex behaviors acquired through evolution are passed on to offspring in the form of genetic-based instincts. The evolution of larger brains, with their increased neural cell population, offered organisms the opportunity not only to rely on instinctual behavior, but also to learn from their life experiences. The learning of novel reflex behaviors is essentially a product of conditioning.

Humans and a number of other higher mammals have evolved a specialized region of the brain associated with thinking, planning, and decision-making called the prefrontal cortex. This portion of the forebrain is apparently the seat of the “self-conscious” mind processing. The self-conscious mind is self-reflective; it is a newly evolved “sense organ” that observes our own behaviors and emotions. The self-conscious mind also has access to most of the data stored in our long-term memory bank. This is an extremely important feature allowing our history of life to be considered as we consciously plan our futures. Endowed with the ability to be self-reflective, the self-conscious mind is extremely powerful. It can observe any programmed behavior we are engaged in, evaluate the behavior, and consciously decide to change the program. We can actively choose how to respond to most environmental signals and whether we even want to respond at all. The conscious mind’s capacity to override the subconscious mind’s preprogrammed behaviors is the foundation of free will.

However, our special gift comes with a special pitfall. While almost all organisms have to actually experience the stimuli of life firsthand, the human brain’s ability to “learn” perceptions is so advanced that we can actually acquire perceptions indirectly from teachers. Once we accept the perceptions of others as “truths,” their perceptions become hardwired into our own brains, becoming our “truths.” Here’s where the problem arises: what if our teachers’ perceptions are inaccurate? In such cases, our brains are then downloaded with misperceptions. The subconscious mind is strictly a stimulus-response playback device; there is no “ghost” in that part of the “machine” to ponder the long-term consequences of the programs we engage. The subconscious works only in the “now.” Consequently, programmed misperceptions in our subconscious mind are not “monitored” and will habitually engage us in inappropriate and limiting behaviors.

Our responses to environmental stimuli are indeed controlled by perceptions, but not all of our learned perceptions are accurate. Not all snakes are dangerous! Yes, perception “controls” biology, but as we’ve seen, these perceptions can be true or false. Therefore, we would be more accurate to refer to these controlling perceptions as beliefs. Beliefs control biology!

All that was interesting, but the most exciting finding was when I simultaneously introduced both histamine and adrenaline into my tissue cultures. I found that adrenaline signals, released by the central nervous system, override the influence of histamine signals that are produced locally. This is where the politics of the community described earlier come in to play. Suppose you’re working in a bank. The branch manager gives you an order. The CEO walks in and gives you the opposite order. Which order would you follow? If you want to keep your job you’ll snap to the CEO’s order. There is a similar priority built into our biology, which requires cells to follow instructions from the head honcho nervous system, even if those signals are in conflict with local stimuli. I was excited by my experiments because I believed that they revealed on the single-cell level a truth for multicellular organisms—that the mind (acting via the central nervous system’s adrenaline) overrides the body (acting via the local histamine signal).

While many in the medical profession are aware of the placebo effect, few have considered its implications for self-healing. If positive thinking can pull you out of depression and heal a damaged knee, consider what negative thinking can do in your life. When the mind, through positive suggestion, improves health, it is referred to as the placebo effect. Conversely, when the same mind is engaged in negative suggestions that can damage health the negative effects are referred to as the nocebo effect.