Chapter 53: The ‘Obesity Epidemic’ as Part of an Extinction Event and its Solution

May 14, 2015 Darryl Penneydigestive system, Extinction Event, obesity epidemic2 Comments

Chapter 53: The ‘Obesity Epidemic’ as Part of an Extinction Event and its Solution

Abstract: the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ is part of a global extinction event that skews our reality and its solution is presented based on state of mind, nutrition and exercise. The Palaeolithic Diet Test aligns our modern reality with the reality of the digestive system and allows reprogramming of the ‘death gene’ of evolution, leading to an extended lifetime and ‘Selection of the Best’.

The ‘Obesity Epidemic’ is the fact that the ‘developed’ world contains an adult population where 60% of that population is overweight or obese. A ‘solution’ is required that will return this 60% to a normal weight and save the country massive amounts of money in health care, and the obese can go back to work. Is this a possible solution? I doubt that a full solution is possible, but a partial solution can, I believe, be attained from the following. I think that we are seeing a fundamental shift in reality that is causing a worldwide extinction event in the fauna and flora of the world caused by over-population of humans. At the same time, our lack of control and knowledge of the extinction event is causing the ‘Obesity Epidemic’.

There is a solution contained in this book and in this chapter, but how many people will heed its message, and for those that are obese and overweight the road is harder, but not impossible, if they have the determination to succeed. The ultimate solution is to return to a normal weight, and to reverse the ‘death gene’ and greatly extend life and our useful years, limit population etc. I believe that this is possible because I am over 70 years old, have a hyperactive young dance partner and Rock’n’Roll most of a couple of nights a week, work for exercise a couple of hours a day and I’m writing this book and have no aches and pains. I believe that, for the moment, I have conquered the ‘death gene’, but of course I am still aging slowly.

The only way to manage the results of over-population is to understand the mathematics of the concepts that drive populations and these have been developed throughout this book. At the same time management must occur and this can be done using proven evolutionary methods and the mechanics are in place in the form of the government, police and judiciary that form a worldwide religion/reality with all endeavouring to the same result using essentially similar methods, and I might add, satisfying the conditions of reality, see chapter 37.

Evolution required iteration and Survival of the Fittest supplied it for 3,000 million years and the hunter/gatherer of the Palaeolithic resulted, but this evolution required the ‘death gene’ to make evolution ‘work’. There was no ‘better’ way, because the Rule of Life showed that it was the ‘best’ way because that was the way it eventuated and that required the older females to be more prone to predation than the younger breeders. This was necessary because mutations in the females’ eggs increase with age and older members would have become more successful at surviving and thus, breeding would have suffered.

This organizational necessity I have called the ‘death gene’ for simplicity and is required if evolution is to be successful. Componentization is fundamental together with iteration (part of the first Law of Life) and is shown by the structure of the atom and within survival of the fittest, and allows muscles to strengthen as needed for survival. The converse (sarcopaenia) weakens older members by selecting for (mental and physical) laziness, chapters 50 and 51. This is the mechanism of the ‘death gene’, and it can be turned around.

The Palaeolithic hunter/gatherer is the reality of the body’s digestive system and an attempt to relate that reality to the modern reality of the brain, body and modern foods required the Palaeolithic Diet Test in chapter 52 to try to bridge the gap and bring health back to people. This is an attempt to provide a reality ‘bridge’ so that modern people can gain an insight of how they are eating compared to how they should be eating. The test is extremely simple, but the fact of measurement brings or includes recognition of a means of assessing our food intake as against what the digestive tract requires, and is a bringing together of the two realities. To restate that, our mind is plastic and the physical environment is still within the capabilities of our body (composed of components), but we are seeing that the digestive system has reached its limits because food has changed over the last 10,000 years. This problem is showing up as the modern ‘diseases’.

However we have seen that we need the second Law of Life to define our interaction with the environment, and that requires state of mind, nutrition and exercise, both physically and mentally. This ‘law’ is a ‘steady state’ for a given reality and the basic problem is that reality has changed, so we have to take that into account. The body’s digestive system’s reality is the Palaeolithic, whilst the mind, body and the environment has a modern reality. The basic difference between the two, involves a change from Survival of the Fittest based on iteration to the Survival of the Best using the mind/brain.

Three main factors are at work here. Firstly, the disparity between what the digestive system can handle, because the design is hundreds of millions of years old and can’t handle modern foods that we have developed for efficiency of production and to make money. Secondly, the ‘death gene’ is a selection of ‘laziness’ over hundreds of millions of years to make us slow down as we age. The third factor is the movement from taking the existing environment/reality (Survival of the Fittest/iteration) to ‘forming’ the environment to suit us (Survival of the Best/mind/brain).

The Mathematics of the Mind keeps these attractors separate and we move between them comparing and selecting and it should be remembered that the answer that we derive is an iteration and moving towards a ‘limit’. It is a mathematics of concepts and has to be this way, as shown previously. This mathematics is general and our mind/brain uses it, as would be expected by the Rule of Life. In fact, the problems caused by technology are because mathematics was used, and mathematics is exact and is not well suited to the social sciences and this mathematics has led us into problems.

We are in the midst of a ‘mass extinction event’ brought about by a reality change from Survival of the Fittest to Survival of the Best and a mass extinction means that those organisms within the new reality expand and take over from those locked into the old reality. Obviously, man expands and the animals are wiped out because we need their living space, and/or we use them as food, but the ‘obesity epidemic’ is showing that some of the humans are succumbing to the reality change also. Within an extinction event, a lot of individuals succumb, and it is naive to expect that things will work out as we hope. We need tools such as the Mathematics of the Mind to see where we are going so that we can control events.

Extinction events occur, for various reasons and the Cambrian appears to be a ‘reality event’ similar to that which we are experiencing at the moment. The Cambrian was a period of rapid change, probably through the appearance of (lensed) sight and the creation of a mind/brain, see earlier. The present extinction is the application of the mind/brain to create technology without understanding the forces that were being un-leashed because mathematics was used that is a special case of the Mathematics of the Mind.

If we use the Mathematics of the Mind, we may be able to control how it turns out, but, if we allow Survival of the Fittest, there is fighting and death. However, Survival of the Best will happen because it is the natural result of both Survival of the Fittest (iteration) and Survival of the Best (mind/brain), and they are both based on iteration. One requires predation, the other planning. Predation is death, but Selection of the Best uses evolution and the Rule of Life to affect birth. Preventing death and suffering is something that modern people prefer to see and vast amounts of resources are spent on keeping people alive. The only humane way is to control births and this has been considered previously.

Those people that want to help everyone are wasting their direction, and thus their time. This is an extinction event and the only thing that can be done is tell it as it is and if they, whether obese, over-weight or normal, don’t take note, they fall by the wayside and leave the ‘best’ to carry on. A certain number of individuals and species are left after an extinction event, but surely we can manage this current event without irreversibly changing the world and the animals that evolved with us. Solving this problem is what this book is about.

Conclusion: the control of this extinction event is there in government, police and judiciary in each country throughout the world, and these form a world-wide religion/reality. There are currently 53 chapters in this book that are freely available, and somewhere, sometime, it will be realized that it will be this way or anarchy will reign. I predict that environmental groups will start the ‘ball’ rolling and women will take control of evolution as they have always done. That is their job, and personality/mental health of children and future citizens depend on home-life, as mentioned before, upbringing is the ‘key’ to stable sensible citizens.

Chapter 52: The Digestive System and the Palaeolithic Diet Test

May 8, 2015 Darryl Penneydigestive system, The Digestive SystemLeave a comment

Chapter 52: The Digestive System and the Palaeolithic Diet Test

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Abstract: a simple review of the digestive system reveals the type of foods that we should eat and the Mathematics of the Mind allows an extremely simple ‘numeric’ indicator of how ‘suitable’ is your current diet, which leads into understanding the ‘obesity epidemic’ and providing a solution based on state of mind, nutrition and exercise.

The previous two chapters led us into the understanding that a reality requires measurement and this simple statement is at the core of understanding modern problems because there are many problems that we don’t really understand how to deal with, and that is why the Mathematics of the Mind is necessary. A recent example is the ‘death gene’ and in this chapter we build on this because it points the way into understanding the ‘obesity epidemic’ and we need the Mathematics of the Mind to numericalize or otherwise put a figure on the question ‘how good is my diet?’.

To restate the previous chapter, we haven’t been able to understand what has been going wrong with the ‘obesity epidemic’, ‘global warming’, ‘over population’ and so on, because they are not part of our reality. Of course we can measure the temperature, the number of obese people, the number of people etc. but we are using mathematics that is exact and we have to use the Mathematics of the Mind to establish a ‘true’ reality. We might say that obese people are obese because they don’t exercise and/or don’t eat properly and we would be correct, but not ‘completely’ correct. This is part of the answer, but we don’t know ‘how’ it fits together, and until ‘sufficient’ attractors are used, we are literally ‘in the dark’.

A general mathematics of concepts can never be exact, if for no other reason, than that there are things that we don’t know, and we don’t know things because we haven’t measured them and so they are nor in our reality. The best that we can do is to use enough attractors, but is there an attractor that we don’t know about? If we knew everything, we would know the exact answer, which is, of course, the ‘in the limit’ answer. Let’s consider the statement that ‘we evolved reality out of the possibility of existence’ and the word ‘evolved’ means that we found a niche in which we can live.

As mentioned many times before, we evolved because iteration is a Truth and a measurement is made when iteration is used and that produces a reality for the measurer. Our mind/brain uses iteration and that is why we can move from Survival of the Fittest (iteration) to Survival of the Best (using a mind/brain), and we have done just that using mathematics, but unfortunately, we have made a mess of a lot of things because we did not measure them properly! We used mathematics, which is a special case of the Mathematics of the Mind, instead of the Mathematics of the Mind itself. In other words, our reality is flawed!

So the statement that ‘reality requires measurement’ is dependent on Truth, which in this case is iteration and if the reality is not good enough and something eats us, iteration occurs, and we become food. If our reality is good enough, we survive, procreate and iteration occurs. The whole statement ‘reality requires measurement’ is based on iteration and can never be exact and so mathematics, which is exact, has to be used with care.

From the above, it appears that it will be a difficult task to numericalize or otherwise put a figure on the question ‘how good is my diet?’, but using the Mathematics of the Mind, it is surprisingly easy, providing that the attractors are kept in mind. This has been done for us by iteration/evolution and Survival of the Fittest and obviously our diet is the hunter/gatherer of the Palaeolithic. Needless to say, when we used our mind/brain our reality changed and problems emerged because we did not fully understand how things fitted together. However, I think that everyone would agree that we are better off today, but would be even better off if we could solve more of the problems.

One problem is that the reality of the body is the Palaeolithic but the mind and the environment have a ‘modern’ reality and we need to align the two. I believe that successfully aligning the two will overcome the ‘death gene’ and modern diseases such as Alzheimer’s, heart attacks, cancer, obesity etc. However, as mentioned before, that state of mind, nutrition and exercise are together, the means of attaining success in eliminating these ‘diseases’, but the question is ‘how many people will succeed in averting them?’, and those that do will be able to call themselves, the ‘best’, because that is, literally, Survival of the Best!

Many chapters in this book have been devoted to talking about nutrition, but everyone that I have met says that they ‘eat very well!’, and they undoubtedly do believe that, but there is an apparent lack of reality because no one measures ‘how good is their food!’. So, the question to numericalize or otherwise put a figure on the question ‘how good is my diet?’ we need to simplify and to do that, we need only look at the part that we don’t use, so, let’s look at the digestive system.

‘We know that the gut’s automatic workings are actually governed by the enteric nervous system (ENS), or “gut brain”, with its complex network of nerves, hormones, and neurotransmitters coordinating the job of digestion. An intricate nerve complex in the intestinal wall that communicates with the brain via the spinal cord. Although called the gut brain, the ENS is not a real brain in itself, since it likely does not store information. (The Sensitive Gut, Harvard Medical School, p 168) Whether the ENS is a ‘real brain’ or not, it does a job and it is similar in that regard to the mind/brain, but I would like to point out that the mind/brain is plastic and can change if necessary, whereas the gut brain is apparently ‘fixed’ in its function.

This distinction is important because the mind/brain can deal with many environments, whereas the gut brain is a component that has a wide enough ‘scope’ to handle whatever comes its way, within reason. Reality shows up again because if something could not be eaten by something else and returned to the world as the building blocks to build a new animal, the ecosystem would ‘grind to a halt’, as has been mentioned earlier. Thus there is no reason for a plastic ENS to exist because the food supply will not change because it is part of a wider reality.

The digestive system obeys the Rule of Life, where the chemistry is complex, but the organization is simple and has remained unchanged, in principle, for a very long time, so it is a component and should be able to do its job based on its effective reality, which is the Palaeolithic. ‘As we have seen, chronic gastrointestinal disorders are not only quite common, but also cause an amazing amount of pain and suffering for millions of people worldwide. Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), functional dyspepsia (FD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and chronic diarrhea, constipation, and gas, as well as food allergies and intolerances, can wreak havoc on the gut. Complicating the problem is the fact that most of these disorders occur in the absence of any observed anatomical or physiological abnormalities. In other words, when doctors check, they can find nothing wrong. That’s why they are termed “functional” disorders.’ (p 184)

This is interesting in that ‘most of these disorders occur in the absence of any observed anatomical or physiological abnormalities’. Added to this, I have said that the digestive system is a component and can handle ‘normal’ food because reality only exists if everything can be eaten by something. The answer is, of course that ‘normal’ modern food is NOT the food of the Palaeolithic, which we know, but nevertheless expect our gut to handle it! Clearly, from the paragraph above, it cannot handle it! So, the sensible thing is to change the food that we eat to that of the Palaeolithic, but people lack reality in this regard because they can’t measure their food intake. We measure it in calories, glycemic index etc., but clearly these are not adequate units, so let’s press on.

‘Most people who believe they suffer from food allergies actually have food intolerances. The most common of these are lactose intolerance and wheat intolerance; others include difficulty tolerating citrus fruits and spicy foods. I have said above that the digestive system evolved hundreds of millions of years ago and is a component that doesn’t break down if used in its ‘design’ range, which is defined by the necessity of reality, so I would like to point out that milk is a ‘modern’ second-grade convenience food, as mentioned earlier, wheat has been ‘selected’ and processed as ‘white flour’, citrus is an Asian fruit only recently introduced to the world and spicy fruits were developed in the New-world.

Meat is almost inedible unless cooked and fire has been used for about 400,000 years and I imagine that the cooking of meat and vegetables would have been one of the primary reasons for the use of fire, apart from the benefit of protection from predators, as has been mentioned previously. So, is there meat intolerance? There are a large number of vegetarians and eating meat could be the result of addiction to fat, as, unlike wild animals, farm animals are bred to contain high levels of fat, especially those that are feed-lotted. So, it would not surprise me that a goodly number of the overweight and obese members of the population are meat-eaters, and this will become apparent as we proceed.

It is apparent that our digestive system, as a component that evolved hundreds of millions of years ago is having problems with modern foods, so a digression is in order to explain the concept of Survival of the Best with regard to, or in the context of, the digestive system. Clearly, our digestive system is a result of Survival of the Fittest (a product of iteration) evolution over a very long time, so how can we bring it into line with modern foods. The answer is to move to Survival of the Best by using the mind/brain and the Mathematics of the Mind to give answers to the specific problem of changing our digestive system quickly to eliminate food intolerances. This will be done, but first, how does Survival of the Fittest handle the problem? From above, many people have digestive problems and they have to be bad enough to stop the worst affected people breeding.

Survival of the Best is based on the success of the ‘herd system’ throughout evolution and several chapters have been devoted to it. The ‘herd system’ is simple (as expected by the Rule of Life) and allows the female to choose the male that she prefers to mate with, presumably to produce the ‘best’ offspring that she can and that choice is made under Survival of the Fittest of the male. In other words, the male presents himself to the female with some show of strength that is superior, whether it be plumage, can hold a herd together, has a superior ‘bower’ etc.

To simplify in regard to the digestive system, the female chooses to mate with a male that does not have evidence of food intolerances. That was easy, and whether it occurs genetically or by lifestyle knowledge is irrelevant and is done by the mind/brain and not iteration by survival. Within a few generations, food intolerances disappear because we have used a much faster method of selection by a higher-level system of iteration.

Continuing, there is the question of probiotics and prebiotics, but to place these in perspective we first need some background. ‘We all cohabit with trillions of these teeming little creatures. Estimates of as many as 90 to 100 trillion have been bandied about … This colossal quantity is generally believed to be made up of between 400 and 500 different types of both helpful and unhelpful micro bugs, although more recent investigation suggests that the number could be much higher…. At any one time, you’re lugging around anything between 1 and 2 kilos of bacteria.’ (Good Gut Bugs, Kathryn Marsden, p 30)

Probiotics is the practice of introducing good bacteria into the gut and the method is commonly through capsules or yoghurts containing several, and up to eight, varieties. Given that there are over 500 varieties, above, it suggests that the gut should be left to sort out its requirements on its own. Furthermore, the gut is ‘an incredibly intricate ecosystem that supports the trillions of microorganisms that live in or on the gut wall and in the gut contents, especially the colon.’ (p 57)

‘Finally, the remaining unused or unusable material arrives in the colon, or large intestine, a four-foot-long muscular tube about the diameter of your fist … Bacteria that reside in the colon help in the digestive process by feeding off whatever remains of our meals – the glycoproteins and carbohydrates not absorbed in the small intestine. The bacteria also produce hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane gas, as well as fatty acids, which provide energy for cells lining the colon… What comes out is primarily water and colon bacteria, plus bile, mucus, and cells normally shed from the intestinal lining. Undigested food makes up very little of the average one-quarter- to one-half-pound stool. Nature does not waste food.’ (The Sensitive Gut, Harvard Medical School, p 23)

This leads into prebiotics defined as ‘non-digestible food ingredients that beneficially affect the host by selectively stimulating the growth and/or activity of one or a limited number of bacteria in the colon, and thus improve host health. (p 71) In other words, the prebiotic component of food is that part that passes through the digestive system unchanged to provide food for the bacteria in the colon. ‘Dietary fibre is found only in foods of plant origin: cereals, fruits, pulses (peas, beans and lentils), seeds, nuts, vegetables and wholegrains are rich in fibre…. Refined grains, such as those used to produce white flour, have little or no fibre. Animal-sourced foods such as meat, fish, milk, eggs, butter and cheese contain none.’ (Good Gut Bugs, Kathryn Marsden, p 89)

From above, it is obvious that ‘the colon, or large intestine, a four-foot-long muscular tube about the diameter of your fist … Bacteria that reside in the colon help in the digestive process’ is a large part of the digestive system and bacteria play a large part and they do this by fermentation ‘a really important part of the workings of the human digestive system. Its something we don’t often hear about but is vital to our health and survival.’ (p 80) Further, ‘dietary fibre is found only in foods of plant origin’ suggests that our diet in the past was predominantly from plants, especially as only eggs were likely to be eaten raw and be readily available from animal-sourced foods. Further, ‘vital to our health and survival’ suggests that the colon is the place to look for the ‘key’ to measure our survivability, and this ‘key’ has to be a measure of the prebiotics in the colon and be easily measured to define a reality.

The contents of the colon are available for inspection when we go to the toilet. ‘Once a day is regarded by most people as healthy, but you might be very surprised to know that large numbers of people go to the toilet three times a week or less. This is really dangerous because constipation is one of the biggest risk factors for colon cancer.’ ( p 41) That defines our measurement system. One large motion a day 1x1x100=100%, two medium motions a day 2×1/2×100=100%, One large motion every second day 1×1/2×100=50%, a medium motion every third day 1/2×1/3×100=17% etc. Clearly, we have set 100% as a norm and we have set up a measuring system.

The Mathermatics of the Mind is iterative and by considering more factor/attractors, the answer becomes more accurate. The next step might be to keep a record and keep a ‘running’ total. Then you could consider the consistency (solid, runny etc.), then the colour and so forth to get a better picture. However, a very simple measurement will prompt people to increase the prebiotic/fibre content of their food and decrease the meat/white-flour/ fat/sugar etc. in their diet and provide a quick ‘snapshot’ of the ‘value’ of their diet. This measurement produces a reality that allows comparisons to be made to a reference point and leads to understanding the modern diet in comparison to the gut’s reality of the Palaeolithic.

Chapter 41: The Cell to the Placebo Effect

February 14, 2015 Darryl Penneycell membrane, circulatory system, digestive system, endocrine system, multicellular organisms, respiratory systemLeave a comment

Chapter 41: The Cell to the Placebo Effect

It is clear that the placebo effect is an effect of the mind, but the mind is linked to the rest of the body, so, in this chapter, I will approach the subject by looking primarily at the cell. ‘Single-celled organisms were the first life forms on this planet. Fossil evidence reveals they were here within 600 million years after the earth was first formed. For the next 2.75 billion years of the earth’s history, only free-living, single-celled organisms – bacteria, algae, amoeba-like protozoans – populated the world.’ (The Biology of Belief, Bruce H. Lipton, p 9)

This is a very long time for development, but these organisms needed time because from the Rule of life, they grew in complexity whilst simplifying logically, without being able to go back logically. Mitochondria were ‘absorbed’ as mentioned previously and the organelles developed over time. ‘So what stopped their growth? ‘Through evolution, the cell membrane’s surface expanded, but there was a physical limit to that expansion. There was a point at which the thin cell membrane was not strong enough to contain a larger mass of cytoplasm. (p 58) The answer had to be multi-cellular organisms if they were to become larger.

The question is, why do the cellular organisms want to become larger? Over a very long period of time the cellular organisms became efficient at measuring the environment in which they lived, and developed simple, but efficient means of diversifying their genetic base and that is ‘swapping’ DNA. So efficient is this system of combining (mathematical) integration and iteration that they have (practically) wiped out the effects of the discovery of antibiotics by our mind/brain. We used Survival of the Best on antibiotics and Survival of the Fittest wiped out the concept in just over 50 years. Thus, it could be said that they have evolved a wonderful ‘reality’, but this reality is limited in some respects.

As mentioned in chapter 12, Why the Brain has Two Hemispheres, the earliest fish used two nostrils to determine the direction of a food source by smell. ‘The point is that single-celled organisms actually live in a community when they share their “awareness” and coordinate their behaviours by releasing “signal” molecules into the environment. Cyclic AMP was one of evolution’s earliest forms of secreted regulatory signals that controls cell behaviour. The fundamental human signal molecules (e.g., hormones, neuropeptides, cytokines, growth factors) that regulate our own cellular communities were once thought to have arisen with the appearance of complex multi-cellular life forms. However, recent research has revealed that primitive single-celled organisms were already using these “human” signal molecules in the earliest stages of evolution.’ (p 99) Thus, it is no great step to using these in a multi-celled organism.

One of the points from the above paragraph is the mechanistic method of decision making and the importance of ‘smell’ in guiding organisms to sexual partners, food as well as awareness of temperature gradients, toxicity etc. These signal molecules guided the organism within their reality, and that was as far as they could go within that reality. As mentioned before, ‘they got along with everyone else’, but their size was limited by the strength of the cell membrane, so they formed multicellular organisms and cells differentiated and communication evolved with the use of nerves.

The notochord was the means of ‘segments’ to join together with nerves running along the backbone to a simple brain in the head. Nerves carry action potentials that can interact with other nerves and generate ‘spurious’ signals through quantum mechanical effects. Quantum mechanics is an indeterminacy that cannot be handled within a reality, because every organism must operate within that reality. The body puts myelin sheath on nerves that transmit precise information (white matter) and leaves it off if imprecision (or creativity/consciousness) is required.

Imprecision and the generation of spurious (but related) signals invites choice, and our universe, which is a probability space allows logic to be used (along with entanglement), and that has been dealt with previously. However, as seem in the case of fish and higher animals, a cerebrum arose, but, due to the Rule of Life and the requirements of reality, the hindbrain continued to be used and that contains both white and grey matter, so the hindbrain was a ‘creating/conscious’ brain that developed from the notochord. Needless to say, all of this is my opinion.

‘I taught my students that the biochemical mechanisms employed by cellular organelle systems are essentially the same mechanisms employed by our human organ systems. Even though humans are made up of trillions of cells, I stressed that there is not one “new” function in our bodies that is not already expressed in the single cell. Each eukaryote (nucleus-containing cell) possesses the functional equivalent of our nervous system, digestive system, respiratory system, excretory system, endocrine system, muscle and skeletal systems, circulatory system, integument (skin), reproductive system, and even a primitive immune system, which utilizes a family of antibody-like “ubiquitin” proteins.’ (p 7)

This is not unsurprising, because the Rule of Life dictates that bacteria and humans must have the most logically simple mechanism, so it is hardly surprising that they have the same components. This is a good time to reaffirm that a ‘component’ is the lightest weight, smallest object that can be expanded, as needed, to do the job, when required. This is also a good time to reaffirm that we are composed of components that will do any job that is required of it, and we, as individuals are components of a group.

It has been mentioned before that an organism, such as the tape-worm will ‘simplify’ its body if its niche does not require them. Contrast this assertion to the quotation; ‘I also made it clear to my students that each cell is an intelligent being that can survive on its own, as scientists demonstrate when they remove individual cells from the body and grow them in a culture.’ (p 7)

This could only happen if the cell was in its simplest state and couldn’t afford to lose any functions, or all the functions were being used. ‘There are lots of IMPs (Integral Membrane Proteins) with lots of different names, but they can be subdivided into two functional classes: receptor proteins and effector proteins. Receptor IMPs are the cell’s sense organs, the equivalent of our eyes, ears, nose, taste buds, etc. Receptors function as molecular “nano-antennas” tuned to respond to specific environmental signals Some receptors extend inward from the membrane surface to monitor the internal milieu of the cell. Other receptor proteins extend from the cells outer surface, monitoring external signals.’ (p 53)

Effector IMPs: ‘every revolution of sodium-potassium ATPase throws more positive charges out than it lets into the cell, and there are thousands of these proteins in each cell. As these proteins go through hundreds of cycles per second, the inside of the cell becomes negatively charged while the outside of the cell becomes positively charged. The negative charge below the membrane is referred to as the membrane potential.’ (p 55) This sets the scene for action potentials to be propagated along greatly elongated nerve cells.

‘Another variety of effector proteins, cytoskeletal proteins, regulates the shape and motility of cells. A third variety, called enzymes, breaks down or synthesizes molecules, which is why enzymes are sold in your local health food store as a digestive aid.’ (p 55)

The answer to the question posed above, that every cell is complete in all its ‘senses’ comes from the fact that every cell in the body is ‘identical’ because they grew out of one cell, which is a combination of the egg and sperm. The simplest differentiation of cells is minimum differentiation and ‘adult’ cells can revert back to ‘stem cells’ in the laboratory. This leads to the means of differentiation and cells use the simple expedient of covering up that part of the DNA that produces the proteins that it does not want produced in that organ.

From above, the cell simply uses its receptor IMPs, which monitor the environment and make changes to the cell in response to the environment by restricting the reading of DNA and thus the proteins encoded there. ‘In the chromosome, the DNA forms the core, and the proteins cover the DNA like a sleeve. When the genes are covered, their information cannot be “read”’. (p 37) This has the effect of providing a long-term genetic base and a short-term epigenetic base and this allows us to change and regulate our body as we please, within limits, and thus shows how to deal with the underlying problems in the population in modern times with respect to diet. This ‘broad’ statement is supported by the following experiment.

‘A landmark Duke University study published in the August 1, 2003 issue of Molecular and Cellular Biology found that an enriched environment can even override genetic mutations in mice. (Waterland and Jirtle 2003) In the study, scientists looked at the effect of dietary supplements on pregnant mice with the abnormal “agouti” gene. Agouti mice have yellow coats and are extremely obese, which predisposes them to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. 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. (p 40)

The first comment must be ‘found that an enriched environment can even override genetic mutations in mice’ should read ‘epigenetic changes in mice’ because a true genetic mutation requires an operator such as Survival of the Fittest to ‘bring it back’. So, the “agouti” gene is epigenetic and ‘methyl-group-rich supplements returned the new generation of “agouti” mice into ‘normal’ mice. But, if methyl-group-rich supplements work, surely a diet rich in all supplements should work better.

This result is in line with previously quoted experiments that indicated that high quality food may work wonders with the “modern” diseases, such as in this experiment where agouti mice had epigenetic changes to their genes ‘which predisposes them to cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer’.

However, people are loath to give up favoured foods and habits that they know that they should give up, such as smoking, ‘fast food’ etc., and so, in line with the expressed aim to make the situation so ‘plain’ that the reasons cannot be rejected, in the next chapter, I am going to define a ‘new’ type of ‘medicine’ that brings together other factors to go with the fact that the body and mind are ‘one’ that has been the subject of this and the last chapter.