Written for Communication Studies class
Ever since the discovery of the genetic code it has been purported that these instructions that build our body was what determined our health and behavior. It is also why so much time and money was put into mapping the human genome. Scientists were expecting to find instructions for things like cancer, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, so that they can perhaps one day eliminate these genes as a means to prevent such detrimental diseases. But it turned out that they didn’t find quite what they were looking for. Improving ones health wasn’t going to be as simple as pulling out the “bad genes” and replacing them with good ones.
It turns out that our genes aren’t influencing our health as much as we initially thought. Not only do our perceptions influence our behavior, but they also influence our health.
This illustration demonstrates how a response to stimuli can result in a reaction. This one specifically shows how the people’s interpretation of their environment lead them to respond violently, when all the squid wanted to do was return some guys wallet. This happens on the cellular level as well. A person may have an allergic reaction to cats even when there is no real threat present, and when the body reacts this way to too many things the immune system becomes overactive, which is referred to as the disease Lupus.
So far what is currently known as a result of scientific research on the subject, is that the perception of one’s environment impacts our tendency for illness, and our perceptions are influenced by our beliefs, which are influenced by who and what we are exposed to, which is our environment.
-We are controlled by our perception of our environment.-
There's this book called 'The Biology of Belief' by Bruce Lipton. He is a former medical school professor and a research scientist studying cells and looking for what controls whether or not a cell becomes pathogenic. His research at Stanford University’s School of Medicine lead him to some new insights into behavior that can be directly translated from the cellular experience to the human experience. This is because for every function that your body has, every cell in your body has a system that is functionally equivalent. His research revealed that the environment that a cell lives in is what controls its behavior and its health, which is contrary to the commonly accepted view that our genetic code determines our fate. On the level of a cell, its environment is known to the cell by its perception of it. On the human level, our perceptions of our environment sometimes turn out to not be true, so in this way perception is belief.
-The environment impacts gene expression.-
Dr Dana Dolinoy studies epigenetic gene regulation as a post doctoral researcher under Randy Journal at Duke University. She observes how exposure to disease and the environment interacts with the epigenome in Aguti mice. This exposure affects their long term health.
Here is a photo of two identical twin mice that she exposed to two different kinds of environments. The fat yellow mouse will likely develop diabetes and cancer, where the brown mouse is much less likely to do so. This example shows that there is something more than just genes that make us who we are. The difference is a fairly new field of study called epigenetics. Without getting too technical let me explain epigenetics as the changes in appearance or behavior of an organism due to being influenced by its environment, which can determine whether or not certain genes will be expressed. So basically, your environment influences your genes.
-Our perceptions can make the difference between life and death.-
In Howard P Greenwald’s book, ‘Who Survives Cancer?’ he explains how the emotional health of the patient makes a substantial impact on their survival rate. As an example, a doctor tells his patient that she has cancer and is expected to live only three months. One way she may react is by thinking that the doctor has authority because he has been through years of intensive schooling and training. She remembers hearing from her parents about how doctors know what they are doing and that she should trust them. If her piers support this ideology, it only makes her belief stronger that she will indeed be dead in three months. This belief increases her likelihood of not surviving past the expiration date which her doctor has prescribed her. If she was aware of the idea of beliefs controlling our health, she could have responded differently to her doctor. She could have refused to believe that a doctor could put an expiration date on a person and instead perceive that it is possible to survive such a potentially detrimental diagnosis.
So our beliefs influence our behavior and health, on the cellular level and the personal level.
My final thought on all of this is, be aware of what you believe and how your beliefs, and the environment you live in affects you. We are all self-conscious and as a result we can choose what to believe and what we want to expose ourselves to. I think this is empowering information that we can all use to improve ourselves by living happier and healthier lives.
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-Sources-
Lipton, Bruce H. The Biology of Belief. Hay House Inc. may 2005 http://www.brucelipton.com/biology-of-belief-overview
Dolinoy, Dana. Epigenetics, a tale of two mice. Nova. ScienceNOW. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/02.html
Greenwald, Howard P. Who Survives Cancer?. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1992 1992. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft9b69p365/
‘Misunderstanding’ by Kristin Hogan.jpg
