ARE DISEASES, PAIN, OR CANCER A MISTAKE; OR DO THEY OCCUR FOR A REASON?
‘When you treat a disease, first treat the mind.’
Taoist teaching
Time and again my clients tell me the same thing: ‘Everything was finally going well, life was good, and then I got this problem, cancer, or debilitating pain. I’d been under a lot of pressure before then, and just as things were getting back to normal, wham, I got sick.’
Perhaps you’ve experienced this, too? After a long spell of hard work and stress, you’re finally able to relax — maybe sitting by a pool or on the beach in an exotic location, with the chance to really enjoy yourself, and then you come down with the flu or gastroenteritis within days of arriving at the resort. Why?
Why does the body make a disease happen? Is it because the body has done something evil? Has God suddenly struck us down from afar because we swore under our breath at our parents when we were 17 and now, aged 35, we have to pay the price? Is it because our genetics are at fault, or are we such highly developed beings that we are more susceptible to disease? Does our body give out on us because our life is so stressful that it creates a disease to punish us because it can’t cope?
Or is there another reason? Consider for a moment, could it perhaps be simply that the body is repairing itself after all the stress we have been through?
While you ponder that question, the following story illustrates why I realized that ‘stress’ is the ultimate cause of disease.
On the second day of running a two-day NLP business course in North Wales with Kristin (my business partner and soon to be my wife), the training was going well when I got out of my seat, ripped a page off a flip chart, and placed it on the wall behind us. This meant that I had to lean over to the left a little bit, not an unusual maneuver, but one that was a little tricky. Then IT happened. A small pain crept across my lower back, focused on the left-hand side. The pain hurt and worried me, so I quickly sat back down, but the pain became even worse.
Somehow, and with help from Kristin, I managed to get through the rest of the training course, but all the time and for 18 months afterward, I asked: ‘Why am I sick?’ Why, when everything was going so well, did my back go? At the time, I hoped it was only a pulled muscle, but was worried because it felt like the same pain I’d experienced when I had a rugby accident at the age of 18. That pain had lasted ten years and I’d gotten rid of it during an NLP training course at the age of 28.
So why did I have this problem? Was there a reason for my back pain? Why was it there? Why did it happen to me at that exact time? I remember thinking about this at length because I knew, through NLP (Advanced Clearing Energetics was still in my future), that the mind was connected to the body. I asked this question over and over again. Why me and why then? What was the purpose for such a debilitating issue to happen to me at that specific time, especially since everything was going so well?
My doctor misdiagnosed my back pain as hereditary ankylosing spondylitis and suggested invasive treatments and pharmaceutical drugs, which, fortunately, I refused. And so over the next 18 months I continued to ask: ‘Why am I in pain?’ But despite consulting some of the top orthopedic surgeons, chiropractors, and other alternative and complementary specialists, they couldn’t tell me what had caused my back problem. However, by that time I no longer cared. All I wanted was for the pain to disappear and to be able to walk again.
Finally, I had a brain CT scan read by a doctor trained to identify specific traumas in certain areas of the brain and their corresponding embryonic organ in the body (something I later trained to do). The trauma was identified as an event that had happened a couple of years earlier, which had severely affected my self-esteem. Therefore, my back pain was a result of feeling unable to stand up for myself and what I believed to be important.
Hearing this energetic diagnosis, everything fell into place. Prior to setting up the training company with Kristin, I’d experienced a shock from my then business partner, when he’d severely undermined my self-esteem while we were giving an NLP training course; it’s what I did, it was my life. As a consequence, I decided not to go into partnership with him, and set up a new business. But the stress and sleeplessness due to the shock over many months meant a disc in my lower back degenerated and later herniated. During this time, I needed to be more flexible to cope with the stress, and the disc in my lower back was literally helping me find a different way to support myself through this problem and stopping me from allowing people to walk all over me.
Once I resolved the issue and set up my own business, then the disc herniated. It was excruciatingly painful, rendering me unable to walk more than 30ft without crying in pain. This pain was not the start of the disease; it was a later stage of a very precise healing process that the body goes through, which I’ll discuss in a subsequent chapter.
However, this issue with my back also taught me more about myself. Since that time, my attitude about life has dramatically changed for the better, and I’m doing what I’m destined to do. My back problems almost made me lose everything I had worked for in my life. However, now I have no pain; I jog, run, walk, and live a completely normal life. I’ve had an MRI scan, and it shows that the cartilage is no longer pressing against the nerves.
As discussed in the previous chapter, medical science doesn’t know the ‘cause’ of many of the most common diseases, believing that the body has just gone wrong. But what if medical science is mistaken and their ‘error’ theory is actually costing more lives than it saves?
Let us explore the medical arguments for thinking this way by starting with genes.
Gene research hasn’t given us all the answers we thought it would. As an example, a gene was found that caused breast cancer. The laboratory that found it was naturally ecstatic and patented the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 (BReast CAncer types 1 and 2), so they could develop therapies to ‘cure’ breast cancer. However, only 5 percent of women with breast cancer have these defective genes or one of the 200 mutations.1 Unfortunately, like many of these promises, gene research doesn’t seem to be able to offer the answer.2
The truth seems to be that the environment controls how a gene expresses itself. According to research carried out by Bruce Lipton, a popular cellular biologist and author, experiments on human cells have shown that if you provide a healthy environment for cells to grow, they multiply happily. Provide a less than optimal environment and they stop multiplying and show signs of sickness: ‘cells I was studying change their structure and function based on their environment.’3
In the past this wasn’t apparent because most cell biologists didn’t take into account the tissue cultures in which they grew their cells — their environment.4 The effect that the environment has on our lives and therefore our cells has seemingly been ignored since DNA’s genetic code was discovered in 1959. And even Charles Darwin regretted omitting the environment and the direct effect that food, climate, social interactions, and place have on individuals, independent of natural selection. In a letter to Moritz Wagner,5 a German explorer and natural historian, Darwin wrote:
‘In my Opinion, the greatest error which I have committed has been not allowing sufficient weight to the direct action of the environments, i.e., food, climate, etc., independently of natural selection.’
So can we say that the environment causes disease? Well yes, the theories all point toward this being true and there seems to be a wealth of evidence to prove this theory.6–21 However, still more research needs to be done to confirm this fact for certain. Yet if this fact has been all but proven, why do the conventional medical professions (your medical practitioner), your well-trained complementary practitioner, or alternative practitioner still believe that the body has made an error? Genetics cannot all be wrong; it is very confusing.
We know that there are a few diseases that occur due to genetics: cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s chorea, and beta thalassemia can all be blamed on genetic disorders, but single genetic disorders affect less than 2 percent of the population. Why is it that someone who is completely healthy suddenly develops one of these diseases later on in life, while others who have the defective gene never develop the disease?
And here’s another puzzling thought: diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are said to be the result of complex interactions of multiple genes and environmental factors. That is the latest thought behind these biggest killers in our Western civilization. Consider this strange fact — only 5 percent of cardiovascular and cancer patients can attribute their disease to heredity.22 Therefore, as far as hereditary diseases are concerned, the evidence doesn’t look good for the ‘the body has made an error’ fraternity.
Scientists have seldom found that one gene causes a trait or a disease. So what switches on these genes? Do genes control the body? Or is this a hypothesis, not a truth, as was pointed out in a paper called ‘Metaphor and the roles of genes and development’?23
The fact is that there are no scientific facts to prove that genes control the body. So if it is not the genes, could environment be the cause? We have to ask the question: could cells change, as the environment changes? Could gene expression switch on and off based on environmental conditions? Even though science has successfully proven that the body has not made a mistake, practically all medical research done today still focuses on the premise that the body is doing, or has done, something wrong. As an example, most cancer research is still trying to find the defective element or gene in the body, or studying the effects of killing a cancer cell using chemotherapy.24
‘Defective’ genes have nothing to do with the rapid growth of breast or any other cancer. In breast cancer, ‘bad’ genes are described as disrupted growth factor functions, yet no research has identified the source of the dysfunction. The normal way to designate genes is by a chromosome ‘number’ and ‘arm.’25 So-called defective breast cancer genes don’t have these proper designations and are just theoretical. No cancer gene has ever been located and identified according to the combination of genetic bases and amino acid fault.26
I’ve noticed that all the studies into disease start off with the illness and work back to ‘how can we make the body well again?’ But what if the body already knows what to do? I personally think it does, as does Dr. L. Hashemzadeh-Boneh, a scientist who trained with me. The fact is that scientists are often 20 or so years ahead of medicine. Scientists know that the body responds to the environment, but the medical researchers don’t listen to scientists.
This can be explained by looking at one of the most exciting areas of genetic research called ‘epigenetics’ (see Chapter 6), the study of how a gene expression is switched on or off due to precise changes in our environment. Bruce Lipton, in The Biology of Belief, discusses how research has shown that the malignancy in a significant number of cancer patients is derived from environmentally induced epigenetic alterations and not defective genes.27 Put simply, genes don’t cause disease. Genes express themselves due to changes in our environment.
It has been established recently that more than 30 genes are responsible for breast cancer, so those companies that patented the rights to a single specific gene, thinking it was the only gene to cause a cancer, are not going to make the money they thought. The ‘Human Genome Project,’ in which every gene in a human body has been mapped, has not produced the Holy Grail everyone was expecting. Science is like that — no sooner do you discover something new than it delivers you the complete opposite as being true. Just look at Newtonian physics and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Here you can find a great example of how science has changed the face of the earth as we know it.
I personally believe it is important that, while we explore what medicine has given us, we need to think again; we must ask some of the fundamental questions and not accept that what doctors tell us is always true. In Advanced Clearing Energetics, we are certain that people can die from a doctor’s diagnosis. Not because of the doctors, who personally have the welfare of the patient at heart, but because of the way the patient’s body reacts to both what the doctor says and the tone of voice used to say it. Just imagine what happens to a person who has just been told he or she has terminal cancer. A diagnosis such as this creates immense stress in a person, their family, work, and life. Everything has now changed: their environment, how they view life, how they view others, and subsequently the environment around their cells changes, causing many genes to change their expression and the possibility of further diseases to occur. Could this be the true cause of secondary cancers?
Doctor’s words are very powerful — a layperson saying the same thing about a prognosis for a patient doesn’t have the same effect. The assumption that ‘doctor knows best’ has been handed down to us over many years. However, the tide is turning, because I believe the evidence they are using to substantiate their beliefs is out of date. Many doctors know this and have written extensively about a different shift in how they approach disease.
In 1986, Dr. Bernie Siegel, a US medical doctor, wrote the groundbreaking book Love, Medicine and Miracles, which suggested there was a direct link between how we perceive an illness, and our healing.28 He used art therapy to understand and explain to patients how they were healing. This practice is still used today with great effect in places such as Penny Brohn Cancer Care in the UK (formerly the Bristol Cancer Help Centre). Furthermore, Dr. Siegel identified a major issue in conventional medical practice — the emotional trauma caused when a patient is given a diagnosis:
‘Unfortunately doctors are not taught how to communicate with patients and so our words and the words given to patients to read induce negative side effects. The words are coming from an authority and have a hypnotic influence. They tell you all the things that can go wrong but do not tell you what can go right. So wordswordswords are swordswordswords. Yes, they become swords which can kill or cure as a scalpel can.’29
The problem is that medical doctors who speak out in this way are often ostracized. The medical profession stops them from practicing by pushing them out of their positions, thereby making it impossible for them to practice inside the normal system. As a result, most doctors stick to the status quo, earn their money, and say nothing.
As you can probably guess, in most countries the medical profession can’t move even if it wants to. It is stuck in a system that won’t budge. However, people are starting to answer back. They are looking for alternatives and refusing to accept what the doctor says as true, quite often because the medical profession hasn’t accepted the existence of what most of us know to be true: the mind—body link.
Furthermore, doctors still can’t answer that elusive question: ‘What causes disease?’ They don’t even know how placebos work. Yet they are totally aware of their presence. Drug companies are very perplexed that the mind (placebos via sugar pills) is as effective as the drugs in clinical trials.30, 31 The placebo effect is not only related to drug treatment but also to surgery, demonstrated through a study into the effects of surgery on knees. Of three test groups, one test had no surgery, yet incisions were made in the patients’ knees. This group recovered just as well as the other two groups, who did receive surgery.32
However, you may be asking the question: ‘Aren’t diseases due to fungi, bacteria, and viruses?’ Here is something really fascinating: were you aware that before the infection expresses itself (e.g., you get a head cold), the virus is present in the blood system, multiplying but not active? Bacteria are multiplying in the blood long before the infection occurs. Before a fungal infection occurs, the fungus is growing, but again is dormant in the blood, ready to be used when it is required. We’ll be discussing this in more depth in Chapter 9 (see Bacteria in our system).
If disease is due to fungi, bacteria, and viruses, why do people rush to buy probiotic products that contain Lactobacillus casei Shirota bacteria? Why are these so-called good bacteria there? Surely we should kill all of them? Bacteria cause disease!
For example, we get food poisoning from bacteria, but why? Why doesn’t everyone get food poisoning from the same meal? Why doesn’t everyone get the flu when the flu is going around? Why doesn’t everyone get athlete’s foot when they go to the gym or swimming pool?
If these deadly fungi, bacteria, and viruses really did cause disease, then we would all be dead by now, because they are everywhere. You may say it’s because you have a good immune system and antibodies to deal with these bugs. Well, I know plenty of healthy people who exercise, don’t smoke, eat well, but at the first sight of a bug they become sick. There are also people who smoke, eat unhealthy food, and don’t exercise, yet they never seem to get these infections. Why?
I’ve also met people who are at the pinnacle of health and fitness. They feel great, they look great, they exercise, they have great mental attitudes toward life, they eat all the right foods, and yet they get cancer, and are then told it is probably due to a virus, as in cervical cancer — the human papillomavirus (HPV). Why? Does this have anything to do with immunity? No, in Advanced Clearing Energetics we don’t think it has.
Perhaps instead, viruses, bacteria, and fungi work in homeostasis (side by side) with our whole system as the cleaners and the digesters. Perhaps they are the workers of our body after we have been under stress.
There is also some evidence that so-called viruses such as smallpox and AIDS don’t exist. No one has ever found the AIDS virus. In order to see a virus you need an incredibly powerful microscope. Only since the mid-1990s has the technology been available to do that. So how do we know these specific human viruses exist? And it gets worse: if these so-called viruses have been found and isolated so that vaccines can be developed, then how is it that no university in the world can prove they exist by producing a picture of them or by separating the virus structure completely outside of a cell? A brilliant virologist from Germany named Dr. Stefan Lanka isolated the first virus in seaweed and then started to study various pathogens only to discover that they were all fabricated. He even wrote to all the top medical universities asking them to prove that the viruses, which were being used as the basis for vaccinations, did exist. None of them to this day have ever been able to prove the existence of these viruses.33
I will explore this whole concept further in Chapter 9, but the theory that disease is due to fungi, bacteria, and viruses, again, like the other theories we have been sold, seems flawed. There is way more going on in the body than the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry would lead you to believe.
You probably know that radiation kills. In the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a nuclear reactor malfunctioned and resulted in a 640-mile exclusion zone. Studies show that the closer animals — mostly birds — lived to the center of the explosion, the more mutations occurred and birth rates were significantly suppressed. Further out, animals were less affected. However, the effects of the background radiation that fell from the skies internationally is thought to have affected 4,000 to 30,000 people worldwide, depending on which reports you read.34 From the figures and observations, I think we can safely say that background radiation is not the cause of all disease. However, radiation in large dosages, as used in cancer treatments, can cause significant damage and even cancer, but the background amounts that we receive daily, in most healthy human beings, are not the cause of disease.
What about poisons? Yes, poisons do kill people, but a certain poison has to be administered in a certain quantity for it to have a damaging effect. Chemotherapy, derived from mustard gas — the same nerve agent used in World Wars I and II — is injected into cancer patients. Despite these extremely cytotoxic (toxic to cells) chemicals being used, the body can and does deal with high levels of poisons.
Any toxin in large qualities will kill you. In fact, any substance in large enough quantities or in the wrong place will kill you. Drinking too much water will kill you. Air injected into your veins will kill you. However, some people smoke and others live in poisonous environments, and some of these people survive with no side effects while others develop life-threatening diseases.
So the body can deal with a mass of toxins. The medical profession uses toxins and radiation to ‘cure’ cancer. Do toxins therefore cause disease? Yes, you can be poisoned. Yes, you can be exposed to a large amount of radiation and die from it. However, toxins are not the cause of all disease.
The only thing that we haven’t explored is stress within the environment. What I mean by ‘the environment’ is how we react to certain situations within our surroundings, other people, changing circumstances, challenging situations, which cause either immediate or ongoing stress that we can’t deal with.
In the next chapter we’ll explore this missing link in disease. What causes disease, pains, and ailments to occur, and where is the proof that this could be the case?