Quantum Mechanics and Zen Koans
I have talked before about the ways in which some people abuse and misuse quantum mechanics.
Since I wrote that article, I’ve had loads of examples sent to me. I’ve also seen lots of books that are often pretty good.
Except for the quantum fig leaf that they use to provide authority and support for what the author is saying.
Even for highly gifted mathematicians – and I’ve known many – understanding quantum mechanics can be a bear. Remember that Einstein himself was unconvinced by the theory, and he was not just a gifted mathematician, but a superbly creative individual who could visualize like no-one else.
And that was part of his difficulty. One of the problems of popular interpretations of quantum mechanics is that they consist of forced metaphors and comparisons with familiar events rather than actual descriptions. Let me take an example: In a quantum system a particle following two different paths at the same time, while not being observed. For most people that sounds like a Zen Koan.
Because it is completely different from the way in which things work in the real world, it is very difficult to grasp.
Quantum mechanics is something that you have to learn to accept and get used to, rather than trying to imagine it in terms of familiar observations in the macroscopic natural world. Many of the concepts cannot be fully expressed in English. Many of the best science writers are always at pains to tell us that what they are saying is suggestive of the ideas, rather than being a complete description of a mathematical construct. Using written language to describe a phenomenon in the quantum world is a bit like using a tape measure to determine the volume of water in a puddle. You can come up with a rough approximation, but not an accurate number.
The only way in which you are able to really understand quantum mechanics is with a change in perception. The moment when people “see it” for the first time, it’s a bit like looking at a Necker cube:
If you look at the corner that I’ve marked “A,” is it pointing toward you or away from you?
Most people see it one way and then if they stare for a moment, it will “flip” it will look the other way.
It’s a simple visual illusion, but it demonstrated the perceptual shift that you need to really understand quantum mechanics. It requires you to be able to think in a completely new way, and very few people have been able to do that.
This is really what the Danish Physicist and Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr meant when he made the famous comment, “Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.”
The Parachute Approach to Evidence
Almost three years ago, one of the British Medical Journal – one of the top rated medical journals in the world – published an amusing article with an extremely serious sting in the tail. The article, entitled “Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma due to gravitational challenge,” highlighted some of the absurdity surrounding the constant demand for scientific validation using only one set of criteria.
The authors pointed out that – as with many interventions intended to prevent ill health – there had been no randomized controlled trials of parachutes in preventing the major trauma that may be caused by gravity!! Yet we would hope that nobody would consider exiting a plane in flight without first equipping himself or herself with a parachute.
Advocates of evidence-based medicine have criticized the adoption of interventions that have only been evaluated by using observational data.
The authors therefore said that, “We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organized and participated in a double blind, randomized, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.”
They used the lack of randomized controlled trials in testing parachutes to show that situations still exist where such trials are not only unnecessary, but also dangerous.
Anyone who has spent 30 seconds on this blog knows that I’m firmly committed to the rational analysis of data. But I am just as certain that there are many valid types of evidence.
There is an important article in this week’s issue of the British Medical Journal that lies at the heart of Integrated Medicine, and the research that we’ve been facilitating. The article suggests that waiting for the results of randomized trials of public health interventions can cost hundreds of lives, especially in poor countries with great need and potential to benefit. If the science is good, we should act before the trials are done.
The article argues that the “parachute approach,” where practice and policies are based on good science but without randomized trials, is often more suitable in resource poor settings. They go on to consider three areas of critical importance, in which there are real ethical, moral and logistical problems if we wait for the results of randomized controlled trials.
They use the three examples of:
- Oral rehydration therapy
- Male circumcision to prevent HIV infection
- Misoprostol for postpartum hemorrhage
We have constantly run into the same kinds of problems with alternative, complementary and now Integrated Medicine. In most of theses fields there is precious little in the way of randomized controlled trials, but a wealth of clinical reports and case series. The problem with unorthodox medicine is that much of it does not fulfill one of the criteria for the parachute approach: to be “based on good science.” This is one of the reasons for expending so much energy on finding common ground between conventional and Integrated Medicine, and for investigating several advances in the basic sciences that may help us square the circle.
It is also why we have adopted a second criterion: the potential for a therapy to do harm. Clearly the level of evidence for risk and benefit is quite different for a potentially risky surgical procedure, compared with, say, crystal therapy. The biggest risk with crystal therapy is that it might get used inappropriately in place of a treatment that has been shown to work.
But above all else, when we are dealing with sick and suffering people, we have to take action. Safe action, action that has a good chance of helping, and action that is fully explained to the individual. Honestly and straightforwardly, and without false optimism.
“A man’s best friends are his ten fingers.”–Robert Collier (American Writer and Publisher, 1885-1950)
Nobel Prizes 2006
This is always an exciting week for anyone interested in science, the arts or the future of humanity.
Every year, the first week of October is the time when the Nobel Prizes are announced. Many of us have our short lists of people we think SHOULD get the Prizes, and it’s always interesting to see who does. I also have to admit to a personal interest: I have several friends and colleagues who are in the running, so I’ve got some fingers and toes crossed for them.
Last year the Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to the discoverers of Helicobacter. Their discovery has lead medicine to reconsider just how many illnesses might be caused by infections in combination with genes, stress and environmental factors. In one moment we moved from blaming a whole group of illnesses on bad behavior to bad bugs.
I just got a little flash on my screen to tell me that this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded.
At the risk of sound like an announcer at the Oscars, the 2006 Prize has gone to Andrew Fire from Stanford and Craig Mello from the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Their work on RNA interference has been receiving massive plaudits amongst biochemists for the eight years since it was discovered. It is doubly remarkable that the Prize has come so soon after the first publication: that is very rare. It is a fundamental mechanism by which genes are regulated in the body, and we believe that the discovery has the potential to allow us to switch off harmful genes. The discovery also allowed us to systematically test the functions of all human genes.
When I have talked about mechanisms by which environmental factors and even thoughts and emotions can change gene expression, it was driven in part by an understanding of some of this work.
Let me add my warmest congratulations to their magificent achievement!
Reversing the Irreversible
When I am analyzing current medical research for you, I focus on findings that are relevant to our underlying theme of Integrated Medicine.
One of the most important of all is the evidence for “spontaneous” remissions of otherwise fatal illnesses, and the reversal of diseases that are usually thought of as irreversible. It is exciting when we can show that arteriosclerosis and some neurological disease may be reversible, though most physicians still do not know that good news.
Two years ago I was asked to comment on a remarkable clinical problem. A 28-year old woman had seen a neurologist about some odd symptoms, which included quite severe visual disturbances. On MRI and electrical she had clear evidence of demyelination, the hallmark of multiple sclerosis. All of which has resolved after just one month of complete withdrawal from her diet of the sweetener aspartame. Multiple sclerosis is a disease that comes and goes, but the point of this case is that there was clear evidence that it went away completely. The neurological lesions in the brain that should have stayed forever, just melted away. I’ve looked at thousands of brain scans and this is extraordinary. And clinically the young woman is just fine.
Cases like this must be very rare: the FDA has determined that aspartame is safe, though on a future occasion I’ll say a bit more about the pros and cons of sweeteners. Discussions about artificial sweeteners usually generate more heat than light, but there is a lot of very helpful data to guide us.
Now let’s look at another condition that is supposed to be irreversible: cirrhosis of the liver. The liver is a remarkable organ. It has almost unique regenerative abilities. I’ve often wondered if the Ancient Greeks somehow knew about that remarkable attribute of our largest solid organ. When Prometheus was chained to a rock, an eagle came every day to eat his liver, which had re-grown by the next day.
The trouble is that if the liver keeps getting damaged and trying to re-grow, it produces a lot of fibrous scarring, the hallmark of cirrhosis. For more than a century, every expert has said that this fibrosis is irreversible. Now some first class research has shown that it isn’t true. An inexpensive medicine can reverse the fibrous changes in the liver.
The medicine is called sulfasalazine (sulphasalazine in the UK) that is normally used for treating inflammatory bowel diseases and some kinds of inflammatory arthritis. A team of scientists lead by Professor Derek Mann has recently moved from Southampton to Newcastle University has made a series of ground breaking discoveries. One of the most exciting is that sulfasalazine can reverse fibrosis in the liver.
The results were published in the journal Gastroenterology. A second and third papers published in Apoptosis, that describe the – then – Southampton group’s collaboration with chemists and oncologists to produce novel and more effective derivatives of sulphasalazine.
The researchers believe that, subject to further research and clinical trials, sulfasalazine could potentially be used to treat types of chronic liver disease – like cirrhosis – that are currently considered untreatable. Sadly because of greater alcohol consumption, especially binge-drinking, and obesity, liver disease is rising dramatically.
And if a simple medicine can reverse something previously believed to be irreversible, the final question that we have to ask is whether other the non-invasive methods may also help? Since most of the non-invasive methods work at deeper and more subtle levels of the organism, the answer to that one is, “Highly likely.” But it is going to have to be tested scientifically, just as every other hypothesis has to be tested.
Vitamin D and Interstitial Cystitis
I think that interstitial cystitis (IC) must be one of the most distressing of conditions to have, and it is certainly one of the most challenging to treat. Outside the United States, it is more often called painful bladder syndrome (PBS).
IC is a condition that results in recurring discomfort or pain in the bladder and the surrounding pelvic region. The symptoms vary from person to person and even in the same individual. It can vary from an experience of mild discomfort, pressure, tenderness, to intense pain in the bladder and pelvic area. Symptoms may include an urgent need to urinate (urgency), a frequent need to urinate (frequency), or a combination of these symptoms. Both may be severe: I’ve seen people who had to urinate every ten minutes. Pain may change in intensity as the bladder fills with urine or as it empties. Women’s symptoms often get worse during menstruation, and some experience pain with vaginal intercourse. There is a good website provided as a service of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), that is fairly up-to-date.
Because IC varies so much in symptoms and severity, most researchers believe that it is not one, but several diseases. There are clear links between IC and fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and chronic fatigue, and probably many other illnesses.
There is good evidence that inflammation in one pelvic organ can cause pain in other organs that share some of the same nerve supply. Inflammation of the colon may make some nerves coming from the spinal cord hyper-excitable, which in turn makes nerves running to the bladder hypersensitive. Because the same nerve plexus connects with the ovaries and uterus, it is no surprise to learn that phases of the menstrual cycle impact the way in which inflammation in one pelvic organ can cause inflammation in another.
IC appears to be becoming more common, although that is always a risky comment, because it was undoubtedly not often recognized in the past. The old teaching was that it was only something that occurred in menopausal women, but it is now being diagnosed in men as well as women, and in people as young as their late teens.
The cause of IC remains unknown, though there have been many theories: infections, allergy, autoimmunity, neurological and genetic. There have been recent claims of the discovery of responsible genes, but hey would most likely be susceptibility genes, rather than causative. Otherwise why should the rates of IC genuinely seem to be increasing? What seems clear is that the normal mucus lining of the bladder wall is damaged.
Multiple types of treatment have been tried, from medication to pelvic floor exercise, to neurological implants and homeopathy and acupuncture. The report of anything new that may help is always welcome.
So I was interested to see a report from investigators in Milan on the efficacy using a molecule that has been attracting a lot of interest recently: vitamin D. The active form of vitamin D is known as calcitriol or 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol (1,25(OH)2D3) that is manufactured in the kidney. Its in vivo biological effects include regulation of bone metabolism, control and modulation of the proliferation of cells and some aspects of the immune response. These characteristics have already led to therapeutic applications in osteoporosis, secondary hyperparathyroidism, and psoriasis. Many reports show beneficial effects of vitamin D in animal models of diabetes, organ graft rejection, experimental allergic encephalomyelitis, lupus nephritis, and in asthma. Despite what you may have seen in some advertisements, just taking extra vitamin D does not help, and may make matters worse: they key is to have the right form of vitamin D, that can reach and affect the right areas of the body.
The Milan team used a vitamin D3 analogue (BXL628) in a mouse model of chronic cystitis. What they found was that a specific inflammatory marker in the blood went down with treatment, and at the same time histological analysis showed a decrease in edema and white blood cell (leukocyte) infiltration in the bladder wall. This and some other biochemical evidence of what is known as “mast cell degranulation,” is very encouraging and strongly supports the potential therapeutic use of BXL628 in diseases such as human interstitial cystitis.
This is the kind of mechanism-based research that holds out enormous promise for everyone’s welfare and will help us in our goal of using science to inform the development of the next generation of treatment, health and wellness.
Quantum Flapdoodle
Regular readers will know that I talk about a large amount of contemporary research relating to our central themes of Integrated Medicine and Personal Integration and Growth. And unless someone is making a dangerous recommendation, most of the time I let mistakes and misunderstandings go. But I’ve just seen some articles that really do need a response.
The authors are misleading us.
And even if you do not see the main article that I’m going to be focusing on today, you may see other similar articles or websites, and I do not want you to be deceived.
I am not a physicist by training, but I’ve spent years getting myself educated in fields like quantum mechanics and relativity theory by some of the foremost authorities in the world. I’ve read their books and papers; I’ve had meetings with them, visited their labs and had them answer a lot of questions, some of which probably tried their patience!
It took a great deal of time and effort. The reason for doing it was not idle curiosity, but because I need to be better able to understand the world, so that I can give sensible advice and we can all survive the critical next few years.
So it is a shame to see books and articles claiming that quantum mechanics or some other field of science “proves” what some writer is saying, when they clearly don’t understand anything about the field.
There have been some notable exceptions: Ken Wilber, Gary Zukav, Fritjof Capra and Deepak Chopra all talk about things quantum and have done their homework. Sadly the majority of people who write books and articles using quantum mechanics to buttress their arguments have not. They constantly show a complete misunderstanding of entire subject. It would not matter in the slightest if folk just wanted to entertain themselves. But when they use false information to try and influence other people to believe something, it gets to be a problem. Particularly if it has to do with your health and your personal destiny.
In some cases it is a matter of people “not knowing that they don’t know.” In others it’s been frank intellectual dishonesty.
I’ve just been sent an article for my comments. It’s one of the worst of its type that I’ve seen in months. And that’s saying something! I don’t want to take the paper and do a line-by-line critique: it’s not necessary.
Instead, I would like you to get some ideas about how to interpret an article that uses quantum mechanics, relativity or molecular biology to support what it says. You wouldn’t spend money on an infomercial with outrageous claims, so don’t get taken in by a pseudoscientist. So let me show you the first steps toward being a savvy reader.
Nobody expects a popular article to be a scientific treatise. But you, as a reader, have every right to expect honesty from the writer.
The author says that the “Law of Attraction” – an old alchemical and Theosophical concept – has been proven by modern science. He says that “Science calls it the Law of Quantum Physics. Metaphysics calls it the Law of Spiritual Attraction.” “Like energy attracts like energy.”
I honestly don’t like being critical, but this is bovine excreta.
The author must have forgotten about the North and South poles of a magnet. Or gravity, quark, strangeness and charm?
There is indeed a Law of Attraction: it is important and provable. But what the author writes about is not it.
He then uses some patently absurd interpretations of physics to buttress his arguments. We don’t need to go through the details of what he’s written. But why it all matters is this: what he has to say has no basis, either in logic, in intuition, or in an appeal to the Traditions. It holds serious work up to ridicule.
The writer then goes on to cite some interesting observations by a Russian scientist named Vladimir Poponin, who’s written some very interesting papers about coherent light: what has become known as the DNA Phantom effect. The writer of this article doesn’t seem to have read any of Poponin’s papers or bothered to analyze the debate that has followed his reports. Are the experiments any good? The writer doesn’t tell us, because he doesn’t seem to know.
Yet he writes about this work as if it is all cut and dried. Poponin’s work is extremely interesting, he’s a careful scientist with a good track record, but like the Emoto experiments on ice crystals that appear to respond to emotions, it needs to be replicated under controlled conditions. And so far nobody’s been able to do that.
Then we are told that photons are “particles of light.” I can only assume that the writer got that from some primary school text.
And here’s more: “Quantum physics is discovering that all physical matter is made of electromagnetic photon energy-light.” If anyone can explain that sentence, I’d love them to tell all of us.
Whenever someone is trying to dazzle us into believing what he or she has to say, there are some dead giveaways:
- Always cite quantum mechanics: chances are that none of the readers knows much about it.
- Then talk about the way in which quantum theory tells us about the way that everything in the universe is interconnected. It doesn’t. That is a separate field of inquiry. Though it a specialty that is generating many very interesting leads.
- Mention the work of some “independent scientists,” whose work is about to revolutionize the world. I’ve been keeping files on these “revolutionary ideas,” since the late 1960s. Looking back over the files I see that this same group of people was predicting permanent colonies on Mars by 1980; limitless power available to everyone before 1990, and scientific proof of the existence of Atlantis, God and the Grays by 2000.
- Talk about secret government research. Yes, there’s been lots of it. But it’s unlikely that someone who thinks that in the quantum realm “like attracts like,” is going to be on the inside track of that work.
- Drop a few names of people who might vaguely support what you are saying. Throwing in Einstein’s name is common. I’m not alone in getting loads of papers from people who believe that they have found the secret of the universe. These papers usually come from independent scholars, and are usually light on facts or proofs. People that I’ve known, including the late David Bohm, Norman Geschwind, Karl Pribram, Colin Wilson and Rupert Sheldrake have all lamented the way in which they get inundated with papers from people wanting endorsements of their work. Professor Sir Peter Medawar once told me that Albert Einstein had – during his years at Princeton – a secretary whose main job was to provide polite responses to fans and people who would send him their papers about how he’d got things wrong, and how they could help. I have not met Ken Wilber, but I gather that he also gets his fair share of papers from people wanting his endorsements about their work, however “unorthodox” it may be. I’ve received more than one paper and then immediately found my name on a website claiming that I endorse work that I’ve not even read!
- Use your own unique terminology. Another writer tells us that there are differences between emotions and feelings, but without telling us what they were. A whole new theory of moods and motivations followed. But it was based on quicksand.
Mistakes and misquotations happen all the time. I’m always grateful if someone finds a hole in something that I’ve written or said. That’s how we make progress. By constantly checking and revising we get ever closer to the truth.
It’s not just amateurs who sometimes misquote or misinterpret. I once heard a Nobel Laureate give a lecture at which he was trying to use neuroscience to confirm his religious beliefs. He was a kind and brilliant man and after his lecture we had a few minutes to talk privately. In one of the key studies that he used to support his views, he’d turned the data upside down. He was shocked to hear that he’d got it wrong. “How do you know the data so well?” he asked. “Because I was an investigator on the study,” I replied. I’m sure that he never used the data again: that’s “checking and revising” in action.
Does any of this matter? Shouldn’t we just let people say anything they want to? In general, of course they should; nobody wants some kind of thought police telling people what they can and cannot write. But the difficulty comes when people move out of their intellectual sandpit and use false information to give advice on how you should run your life or care for your health.
The authors of papers like this are misleading you. Either through their own ignorance, or perhaps even deliberately, the people who write these things are misdirecting you from the real findings about manifesting, consciousness, connection and enlightenment.
We are living at a time when the curtain seems to be coming down on some interpretations of reality such as string theory, and the veil between different compartments of reality is being torn asunder.
Articles like the one I’ve just quoted are futile distractions that lead skeptics to ridicule everything that we are doing to construct a unified model of reality and our place in it.
And any advice that’s based on these kinds of misunderstandings will not have much value for any of us.
What to do?
Nobody can be an expert on everything. But apart from the warning signs that I mentioned, here are some other warning signs that what someone is recommending to you might not be all that it seems:
- If people present testimonials as evidence
- If they use selective anecdotes to support a theory
- If they claim the support of science without using its principles of falsifiability, impartiality, replication, correction and revision
- If they misrepresent the basic tenets of science and its practitioners
- If they suggest that research is underway to confirm his or her pronouncements
- If they claim that a breakthrough is imminent
- If they make claims that he or she says are amazing, when to a specialist they are not amazing in the slightest: people do sometimes just get better on their own, and there are hundreds of diets, each of which will likely help someone somewhere
- If people use graphs and charts in place of empirical evidence
- If the author makes false claims for experience and credentials: somebody claimed to have treated 10,000 people in one year using a new technique based on quantum biology. If he had worked non stop, ten hours a day, five days a week for the whole year without a single break, he would have had to see, evaluate and treat a new person every fifteen minutes. During which he would also have had to make his notes, write letters and make calls to people that he had seen. Does that sound credible to you?
- If there are no credible scientific references to back up what the author is saying.
- If he or she bases claims on authority rather than verifiable data: remember a moment ago I mentioned a Nobel Laureate who’d made an honest mistake. Yet it wouldn’t surprise me if other people were still quoting that mistake all these twenty years later.
- And finally be very careful about people who use one mystery to explain another. People who wave their hands a lot (a sure sign of someone who doesn’t know what he or she is talking about!), and speak airily of the way in which quantum mechanics explains parapsychology have to prove what they say. Some fine people like Gary Schwartz and Dean Radin have peered deeply into the mysteries of physics and found a framework that may indeed be able to explain anomalous phenomena. Their books and papers are highly referenced and they have generated a ton of empirical data.
So the next time that you see someone say something about the Law of Attraction or tell you that “quantum mechanics has shown that…”
Caveat emptor!
Telling Who's Telephoning
Regular readers will have spotted that I highlight Rupert Sheldrake’s website on this blog, and I have written approvingly of some of his work.
Some years ago, when I still lived in the United Kingdom, we had a number of spirited discussions. We certainly did not agree on everything, but he always impressed me with his intelligence, insight, integrity and humanity. He thinks very quickly on his feet, and is also not lacking in courage and resilience: vital commodities when exploring areas that lie outside the academic mainstream.
Carol Kirshner just found an article that came out yesterday.
Rupert presented a paper at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. The fact that he was reporting on experiments looking at the phenomenon of a type of precognition – knowing who is on the line when the phone rings or knowing who sent an email – shows that Rupert has considerable intestinal fortitude.
The numbers in the trials were small, but he reported a hit rate of 45 percent, rather than the 25 percent you would have expected in these trials.
This is the latest report of a work in progress, and it is being done slowly and deliberately becaue if it is correct, the implications for all of us will be stunning.
The only unfortunate thing about Rupert’s work is the number of people who snipe at him instead of engaging in debate and futher research. The attitude of some academics is one of intense fundamentalist intolerance, a point made in a book that I recommend: Alternative Science, by Richard Milton.
I don’t agree with everything that he says either, but many of his points about scientific intolerance are right on target. The book was written over ten years ago, and little has changed.
Except for the worse.
The Epigenetic Code
In Healing, Meaning and Purpose I reveal some of the extraordinary changes that are occurring in our understanding of genetics and inheritance. Even if you are currently learning genetics in college, it is quite likely that some of what your professors are teaching may already be out of date. I say that with the greatest possible respect: I find that in some of my fields of expertise, I am often having to update my teaching materials every week.
One of the remarkable discoveries that is generating huge amounts of new information is what we call epigenetics. This is the study of a form of inheritance that can occur without fundamental changes in gene sequences. This has to do with the idea that there is a second layer of programming on top of our DNA. A code that can change over our lifetimes in response to environmental change. Diet, hormones, chemicals in the environment, stress and even thought, emotion and behavior, can all change the ways in which our genes are expressed. Some of these epigenetic changes can be passed on to other generations. In other words, there can be an inheritance of acquired characteristics. Something that has been denied for over a century.
Let me give you a simple example. Studies of a particular species of mouse have shown that maternal diet has an effect on the coat color of the offspring. This was the result of what is known as methylation that altered gene expression. These changes in coat color were carried on to the next generation: the grandchildren of the mouse given the special diet. This created quite a stir, because it had been thought that epigenetic changes in cells are erased each time that a cell divides. Obviously that was not happening. We now have many examples of epigenetic changes being passed on to the next generation and the next. There are literally hundreds of scientific papers on the subject.
As I have written before in my last book and CDs, in articles and in reviews at Amazon and elsewhere, the traditional view of genetics has been one of genetic determinism. That we are all little robots whose entire lives are dedicated to nothing more than passing our DNA from one generation to the next. And the genes even dictated how we did that. I still know many gene jockeys who are convinced that the whole of human behavior will ultimately be explained by our genes, and that free will is therefore a myth.
I’m just as sure that they are wrong.
Let me give you an example. Identical twins have identical DNA, yet we have known for fifty years that one twin may get a genetic illness that the other does not. And the brains of identical twins, though they start out identical, quickly become quite different from each other because of the impact of the environment. Twin studies of mental illness have been going on at the Institute of Psychiatry in London since 1960. Every patient coming to the hospital is asked by the clerical staff if he or she is a twin. And there has been groundbreaking research on mentally ill twins at the National Institute of Mental Health for decades. And what have we learned? Though there may be a genetic component in schizophrenia, when we look at people with schizophrenia who have identical twins, only half of the twins have the illness, despite having the same DNA. The key difference is at the epigenetic level.
Marcus Pembrey from the Clinical and Molecular Genetics Unit at the Institute of Child Health, part of University College, London, has been at the forefront of the work on epigenetics. Marcus has had the opportunity to study the unusually detailed historical medical records of the isolated northern Swedish city of Overkalix. He and his colleagues found something astonishing. The grandsons of men who experienced famine during mid-childhood went through puberty earlier and had longer life spans, while the grandsons of men who were well fed in early childhood had an increased likelihood of diabetes. For females, the effect was similar but it was tied to the grandmother, rather than the grandfather. Presumably these responses are designed to adjust our early growth and reproduction to be ready for unpredictable changes adverse events in the environment. I would call this epigenetic resilience.
In a separate study done in Bristol in England, Marcus studied two generations of families, and found that fathers who had started smoking before age 11 had sons who were significantly heavier than average. There was no similar effect on daughters.
There is already some evidence that epigenetic factors may play a role in the development of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Many of us are becoming excited about the potential benefit that may flow from a better understanding of genetic and epigenetic mechanisms in major psychiatric disorders.
There is a new journal called, appropriately, Epigenetics that contains a treasure trove of important information. The editor is Moshe Szyf, form McGill University in Canada, and he recently pointed out that one single gene could have as many as 700 epigenetic programs associated with it.
His own research has linked epigenetic change to social interactions: the way in which we behave toward one another can lead to a change in how our genes operate.
Rats whose mothers groom and lick them when they are young grow up to be much calmer than rats whose mothers neglected them. There is, of course, nothing surprising about that. We all understand the importance of good child rearing. But what was surprising was the finding that epigenetic changes are the cause. By nurturing their young, the rat mothers activated a gene that suppressed the creation of cortisol, one of the stress hormones.
Pups who were neglected did not have that gene activated, so they produced more cortisol and were therefore more stressed out.
Knowing this, the researchers were able to increase the well-nurtured rats’ stress by injecting them with methionine, an amino acid commonly found in food supplements.
Here we have proof that the link between food and mood is not just due to transient chemical changes in the neurotransmitters of the brain, but that a chemical in our diet could cause fundamental changes in the way in which our genes work. In this case a rat’s emotions and state of mind. The implications for all of us are extraordinary.
Since 2003, a consortium of public and private firms in Europe has been working on the first Human Epigenome Project (HEP), and it hopes to have completed 10% of the map by the end of this year. As you can see, it is a lot more complicated than mapping the human genome, and epigenetic codes are constantly moving targets. The first reports from HEP have indicated that at least 20% of the genes studied so far can have their behavior modified by the environment. The food that we eat, the chemicals that we ingest and the attitude of our parents and peers can all change the way in which our genes function.
As Marcus Pembrey has said, “Child care has a whole new meaning.”
This is all crucially important, because one of our most important discoveries has been that human beings have been undergoing extremely rapid physical as well as psychological and social change, and that is one of the reasons why the Laws of Healing have been changing over the last century.
Science, Quantum Mechanics and Mystical Experience
I’ve had a very long standing interest in altered states of consciousness.
For me this has never been an academic exercise. Though I grew up at a time when meditation and mysticism was all the rage, I was actually trying to make sense of some of my own experiences. Since early childhood I’d had all manner of odd experiences that in later life I learned were the norm. It’s just that most people ignore or forget their experiences or are "trained" not to talk about them. In the mid-1980s I lectured on the subject of mystical experiences at the Society for Psychical Research and the College of Psychic Studies in London. (I recently discovered that there are still tapes of those talks available after all these years!)
As part of another project, I recently analyzed most of the world literature on altered state of consciousness in all the languages that I can read, and found over 2,800 valuable papers. There is a huge amount of research going on.
I’ve also come across a number of short but very interesting interviews with a number of original thinkers in the field of consciousness, including Huston Smith, Daniel Dennett, Freeman Dyson and a number of other thinkers. If you have any interest in consciousness you will probably find something to interest you here.
Enjoy!
Scientific American Podcasts
One of the very many useful resources on the Internet is the Scientific American website.
Attached to it is a weekly podcast that summarizes a few of the most important recent new items.
For those of us engaged in developing, evolving and refining a new model of reality that will have practical applications to health, wellness and personal evolution, it’s really important to know about the most up to date discoveries of conventional science. And how they fit in with – or challenge – our attempts to grow our field.
So many people have claimed to create new models that have collapsed at the first challenge. They usually contain the words "quantum" or "Einstein" somewhere near the beginning, or some half-remembered piece of High School or "Pop" psychology. It is usually easy to see that most have not done their homework!
We have instead been embracing new data from many sciences, from clinical experience, from intuitives and spiritual teachers and constantly testing the concepts and methods to see if they can be refined or improved. I’m pleased to report that we have been making rapid progress.
Enjoy the podcasts!
