Informed choices and that gut feeling
The media and discussions these days are filled with the preventive double mastectomy of Angelina Jolie. Comments range from acclaim for her courage and consistency, shock about voluntary self-mutilation with dubious sense, up to the representation of the famous actress as a pawn and figurehead for corporations who make money on such measures.
In her own opinion, published in the New York Times [1], she describes the reasons for her decision: her mother had died after 10 years of battle with breast cancer at age 56 - therefore Jolie let her genes be tested, whereby mutation of the "breast cancer gene" BRCA1 was detected. Her physicians estimated her risk of developing breast cancer at 87%.
When I knew that this is my reality, I have decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much as possible.
After having described the three-month procedure of the stepwise intervention with gentle removal and reconstruction of the breasts, she reveals the motivation for her openness:
I want to encourage every woman, especially if you have a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, to seek out the information and medical experts who can help you through this aspect of your life, and to make your own informed choices.
I acknowledge that there are many wonderful holistic doctors working on alternatives to surgery.
Fear and reality
I do respect Angelina Jolie fully in her decision to meet her reality of a "sword of Damocles" in a way that takes the fear off her and her children. For me and my clients, I also want to achieve to not make decisions led by fear, but by the certainty of finding peace, inner balance and strength in them. In my opinion, good therapists are characterized by supporting their clients on the basis of their own personality and choice, and also by referring on to appropriate specialists if needed.
Fears are there to motivate us to move away from the threat. Fears are produced by a brain area that is not rationally questioned - the so-called reptilian brain, which takes care of the basic needs of survival, predominating everything else. So far about the biological background of this early warning system.
When we look at what gives people fear, it's not just obvious dangers and threats. Symbols of previously experienced powerlessness which can be memories or even heard or read stories, can make us see inner pictures of horrors. Do all these symbols represent a generally valid background of real threat? No - because fairy tales and fantasy films can cause the same anxiety reactions. This may even be used intentionally to influence the public - or to educate children ...
Fear can as well be caused by a distorted view. This is particularly obvious in so called "anxiety disorders" and phobias, where harmless things in the everyday environment for some individuals have become symbols of fear, affecting their whole lives and social contacts . It seems legitimate and reasonable to treat such "overanxiety" in order to change it. Fear is therefore not to be seen digital as "all or nothing", but the feeling should ideally match the current context.
Often, a scenario of fear changes with extended experience and understanding. A new environment, lack of overview, unusual challenges that trigger stress and anxiety, after a while lose their signal effect on our alerting system. This happens even in the case of real dangers! Examples are measures of occupational safety, which may be nonchalated by highly experienced workers more often than by unexperienced ones, leading to accidents. Even more persistent threats, disasters such as the nuclear accident in Fukushima, no longer seem to persist in our consciousness after a time of fear and turmoil. Anxiety decreases to the extent of one´s emotional gaining of control, getting distance, or where it recedes into the background
The fear of cancer
The concept of cancer and the associated ideas of sickness and death means anxiety for the majority of today´s people. This fear is produced by horrific images that come not only from their own memory of a deceased relative or friend, but also from the media portraying heroic cancer-fighting medics and patients. Many of the horrendous symptoms you see, however, are stemming rather from the therapy than from the cancer itself.
Medical science admits that it is not aware of the causes of many diseases, including all cancer processes. Thus the survival rate five years after completion of treatment is no valid evidence of healing, but a arbitrarily drawn line for statistic documentation . The fear of recurrence or metastasis remains. And - without ethical evaluation from my side - a growing sector of the pharmaceutical and medical technology benefits from lifelong screening and treating the collateral damage of the cancer treatment.
Even cancer is a strategy
In the understanding of META-Health the processes that, only if they occur very violently, during a long time, or under suboptimum conditions, develop into pathological cancers, have a function for us. They are started under very specific conditions with a biological conflict shock, an isolating trauma. In natural conditions, which unfortunately have become rather uncommon in today´s societies, the physiological responses were meant to help just to solve this problem in a timely manner.
In the case of cancer in the breast glands (there are different types of breast cancer that would address other traumatic perceptions), a big concern or dispute triggers a response to produce more milk for protection and nourishment. Only when a woman has experienced such feelings traumatically, she will get this type of cancer, and if the reason for this response is resolved, the body will autonomously restore the normal function, stop the growth and dissolve or encapsule the tumor cells.
The mechanisms of autonomous cancer reduction by inflammation and apoptosis are known [2]. This occurs under conditions that are "back to normal", ie according to an internal "all-clear" conflict resolution.
This means that every person can have cancer cells in their body, without incurring a pathological cancer, as long as she finds the means to discharge her emotions that froze in the instant, and to resolve her conflict soon. The fact of having and handling cancer processes resembles even genes being switched on or off by perceptional triggering or by inhibition.
A Danish study from 2008 [3] confirms that mammographical screening, because of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, leads to no more cancer survivors, but to more women being labeled as ill.
What do genes express?
Genes are blueprints for characteristics both physiological and psychological that are passed on from ancestors to descendants. Just as in early childhood learning where you cut your teeth on certain behavioral strategies that stay with you as more or less unconscious patterns running "on autopilot", providing you with a proven strategy as basis for survival and handling challenges. But do all of them remain throughout your life? In the course of your life many of those will be outgrown and replaced by behaviors that now seem more appropriate , because the environment has changed and you have learned through own new experiences.
This is similar to genes being turned on and off through mechanisms that are explored in the science of epigenetics. Trigger for switching off a gene segment are environmental stimuli and our bodymind´s evaluation whether to use old or to add new information to the system [4][5].
Own experienced traumas are stored in epigenetic "cellular memory" and through them being healed, our patterns of reacting change right down to the cellular level!
Namely cell biologist Dr Bruce Lipton clarifies in his book "The biology of belief", how the intelligent control center of our cells is not the nucleus with the genetic information, but the cell membrane which absorbs or rejects molecules of information. The decision to accept or reject information, to activate a gene or shut it down, is prompted by our ATTITUDE. The same that leads to our perception of reality.
In my article on the placebo-surgery I have examined the power of belief and imagination. This alone only lets the body autonomously carry out cleaning and healing processes which were previously thought to make technical interventions necessary.
Your own reality
What would be possible in the context of your beliefs, your thinking and evaluating? How can you break away from fears and catastrophic ideas that activate genes such as BRCA1, and replace them with better strategies that will turn off the BRCA1 as *unnecessary response*?
Here the placebo and nocebo effects come in. Logic and pseudo-logic influence the reinforcement or the re-evaluation of those personal experiences which create our perceived reality and future. The power of information that passes our filters unquestioned. Nocebo is the negative sister of placebo, this means, for example, the hypnosis limiting our reality potential by constantly recurring (scaring) views in media and environment. The judgment of a physician weighs heavier than one´s own hope and often even heavier than one´s own feelings - if you have no access to your own inner wisdom or if you do not trust it.
How is it that just people in auxiliary medical professions (those with insight into, but some distance from the traditional medical health system) often start to question the knowledge and skills of physicians in certain areas , and thus to doubt the validity of their conclusions? It is by the experience that even doctors are not medically omniscient and sometimes pass on insufficient information to their patients, which can be supplemented or corrected by a holistic therapist with good client rapport trained to see the overall picture as well as the personality and needs of the individual.
To consciously create a reality, we need more than just understanding, because the knowledge of the head, the wisdom of the heart and the gut feeling must be in line. One needs the Aha!-experience that makes your insight valid at all levels, all conscious and unconscious areas of the brain and the cells of your body.
What comprehensible explanations are there for holding on to concepts whose general validity is already refuted?
- Tradition of the old concept in one´s own beliefs and linked to one´s own identification
- the feeling of dependence on the community sharing the belief in the old concept, and linked to that:
- the feeling of dependence on workplace and supply
- cognitive overload and unwillingness to ponder alternative concepts in depth
- the projection of one´s own feelings and values to others, deriving invalid general conclusions
- the feeling of loss of control through a paradigm shift
- relief of one´s own responsibility by following the mainstream.
- avoiding emotionally charged topics
- linking the issue with guilt
All these reasons are produced in the reptile brain, are deeply rooted and emotional. Therefore, the contributions in discussions about alternative views of medicine, disease and prevention are often characterized by very emotional posts and attacks. Of course, this does not do justice to the meaning of science and research. Ideally, scientists would be free of the factors above - which in practice is rarely the case, because even scientists have a reptile brain ... Unless something else is so much more important. Unless you had an own Aha!-experience. Science and research should be more interested in the atypical but possible, as in reproduction of the typical results in studies.
There are already cancers healed without surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. What Angelina Jolie mentioned as "In progress", is reality today for more and more people. Even with advanced cancer processes, the chance of recovery without traditional treatment but supporting the natural selfhealing powers of the bodymind has been proven in countless cases [6]. Examples of this support are:
- acid-base balance through nutrition [7]
- cannabinoids [8]
- addressing the psycho-biological background of carcinogenesis
- consistent change of life towards the true desires and goals
And prevention? With the understanding of META-Health, the attention and the confidence in the wisdom and consistency of one´s own organism, prevention of trauma is hardly possible, nor would it be necessary. We do not need to prevent basically meaningful processes. However, you will take care of optimizing the rhythms and processes by optimal supply and disposal. This concerns the supply of nutrients just as the supply of solution-oriented information and the disposal and release of wastes as well as outdated scenarios and emotions.
If Angelina Jolie can not adopt this view, her choice of preventive mastectomy is consistent. She does not plan to breastfeed children any more. But what about women who still want to give birth? Wouldn´t they, without information about the above options, be unnecessarily led into a one-way street?
To deal with one´s fears, there are no generally right and wrong ways, just individually coherent ones..
Choose the one that strengthens YOU!
PS: Find the original article in German here
References:
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/opinion/my-medical-choice.html?hp&_r=2&
[2] http://scienceblogs.de/bloodnacid/2012/09/03/basics-apoptose-oder-der-programmierte-zelltod/
[3] http://www.cochrane.dk/screening/mammografi-de.pdf
[4] http://www.peter-spork.de/87-0-Schutz-aus-dem-Erbgut.html
[5] http://www.science-meets-society.com/wissenschaftsnews/traumatische-epigenetik/
[6] http://www.krebstherapien.de/page0/page7/index.html
[7] http://www.nam.de/onkolog.htm
[8] http://cannabisoilmediadocument.blogspot.com/2012/06/introduction-my-name-is-justin-kander.html
Image sources:
[1] chris_natt (Angelina Jolie) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJolietop2.png
[2] Walter Groesel http://freeimages.com/photo/heart-1239269 [freeimages license (http://freeimages.com/license)]
[3] By Rodolfa, K.T., Inducing pluripotency (September 30, 2008), StemBook, ed. The Stem Cell Research Community, StemBook, doi/10.3824/stembook.1.22.1, http://www.stembook.org.
[CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_epigenetic_landscape_and_its_implications_for_direct_reprogramming..jpg