This Journal begins a series to be called the “The Daily Tinkering.” These writings will present ideas to consider as to how you might incrementally reorient yourself to a more healthy management of your inner life. This is basically a reexamination, reorganization, and evolution of concepts presented elsewhere in these writings.
This particular Daily Tinkering Journal will be a long and ambitious one, and will encompass the following topics. You can just skip to the sections you want to read, as you please.
- why individual genomics testing is important to consider in improving one’s proactive health approach
- a debunking of the false legitimacy of the pandemic of folic acid usage
- some simple practical considerations about our Emotional Tool Box/Guidance System
- some words about our Heart
- some words about our chakras
- a short explanation of the human exposome
A nice quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson concludes the missive.
The writing attempts to present elementary portions of our warp and weave for your consideration…genetics, biochemistry, emotions, Heart electromagnetics, energy field dynamics, and the theme of embracing your life and Divinity.
Glimpsing Inward, Part I
The first deeper glimpse inward which I want to reference for the reader is for you to engage in a serious inquiry into the foundational blueprint of your biochemistry and your molecular biology by conducting a study of your personal individual genetics.
In prior Journals I have written about the importance of understanding your own human genome. I wrote about this in the Journal entitled “Minding your Methylation, Part II.” It was also appropriately referenced in a follow-on Journal entitled “Depression.”
The human genome and mutation SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) was adequately explained in the Methylation, Part II Journal, and I refer the reader back to the section in this writing for an explanation and a review.
I now recommend to clients who desire a more self accountable embrace of their unique inner biochemical workings that they undergo a very simple gene carrier status analysis via a saliva sample testing from www.23andme.com. This study reveals not only one’s ancestry lines (should you be so interested), but it reveals heterozygous and homozygous SNPs (mutations) at 195 genetic polymorphism sites.
These polymorphism sites cover your particular biochemistry potential for performance in the areas of detoxification, neurotransmitters, methylation, endocrine function, cardiovascular function, digestion, vitamin activity, and mitochondrial function.
Most clients have 50 to 60 mutations of a mixture of homozygous (2 abnormal variants inherited from both parents) and heterozygous (one abnormal variant from one parent and one normal gene from the other parent) mutation SNPs.
When taken in the aggregate, and when scrutinized from the standpoint of that particular client’s health concerns and epigenetic lifestyle practices, then a more tailored and individualized nutritional regimen can be recommended. Such an approach is far superior from the cost-effectiveness perspective than the current commonplace shotgun nutrient regimens which practitioners often recommend. Safety and efficacy are improved.
A Short Diversion on the Important Subject of Folic Acid…
A simple example of how to help your genomics that anyone can do…without a genomics testing…is to just remove the harmful synthetic additive known as folic acid. This toxic compound is now sprinkled all throughout the food (and supplement) industry by FDA mandate to “fortify” the food. Folic acid poisons methylation pathways, neurotransmitter pathways, and cardiovascular health…not to mention the definite associations of this synthetic compound with the generation of some very common cancers. Folic acid is not found in nature.
Please refer to the Journal mentioned and linked above, “Minding your Methylation, Part II.” It should become clear that you should avoid all foods and supplements which contain this compound. Even those who do not have methylation enzyme mutations will have difficulty metabolizing this toxic synthetic compound. Folic acid has to be metabolized through several inefficient enzyme steps; especially inefficient in those who lack correct methylation enzyme capability: folic acid to tetrahydrofolate to 5,10 methyltetrahydrofolate to 5 methyltetrahydrofolate. This last compound, 5 MTHF, is also known as vitamin B9. Some of its vital functions were described in the Methylation Part II Journal.
A vast majority of nutritional supplement companies still use 100% folic acid in their supplement line, while a few use a blend of folic acid along with some level of natural folates. Others use methylated folates, such as 5 MTHF, in featured folate products, while using folic acid in their multivitamins and formulary products. One can find others that claim they only use “whole food ” nutrients, when in reality one can simply read their labels and see products that contain some amount of food mash combined with USP vitamins, often including folic acid.
The cost of using a natural folate (5 MTHF), like NatureFolate in the Designs for Health formulations as seen in the Store on this website, is up to 400 times more expensive than folic acid. And there you have it…folic acid is still being used because it is cheap. However, in the long run, it is not at all cheap when you factor in the resulting morbidity and mortality.
Conservative estimates indicate that 40-50% of us are genetically mutated in such a manner that we cannot run these conversions into 5 MTHF. For those who can run the conversions, folic acid is still a toxic compound. As the prior writing explains, we should be taking natural folate (vitamin B9), as is found in nature. Methylation pathways serve as one of our core biochemical pathways. Folic acid poisons these complex pathways. It is literally akin to throwing the proverbial monkey wrench into the complex biochemical gears of life, and hoping for the best.
It is toxic to the unborn child because it becomes part of their exposome, a subject to be touched on in my concluding remarks.
Those who are able to metabolize folic acid with some success are blessed with helpful genetics and excellent epigentics. Are you one of these types?
Here is an updated writing on the subject of folate vs. folic acid from June, 2017, which should reinforce the points above.
Back to your Inner Glimpsing and Tinkering…
The gene carrier status information obtained from 23andme is largely indecipherable until the information is collated and run through another app at www.NutraHacker.com.
The cost of the kit from 23andme is $199 and the cost of the NutraHacker app interpretation is $40. This is the cheapest and most cost effective paradigm shifting healthcare information that I have ever encountered in my 6 plus decades of being around the illness and healthcare world.
Glimpsing Inward, Part II…the Grief Box
This part of the Journal refers to the Grief Box construction which we all do. This section considers aspects of our Emotional Tool Box. The manner in which we hold, carry, feel, and express our emotion states is an important determinant in our epigenetic umbrella of gene influence.
Emotional states are one known factor which affect gene histone proteins. These proteins create the super-coiling of the DNA strands so that they can fit inside of the cellular nucleus. Histone proteins also control the manner in which genetic codon segments are revealed and transcribed into RNA. The RNA template, so copied, is then translated into functional protein in the cellular ribosome.
Experimental studies designed to study the affect of positive vs. negative emotional states on DNA coiling have shown some interesting results. If we are experiencing the moment in a love based, optimistic, and happy manner, then the DNA transcription and translation is enhanced in a healthy manner because the DNA is able to uncoil and elongate and be easily transcribed into its RNA template. Translation then occurs outside of the nucleus in the cytoplasmic ribosome. On the other hand, negative emotion states result in a tighter coiling of the DNA, and potentially more chance of error in transcription. The inference in this last sentence is my own.
What happens throughout the course of our lives is that we experience some traumatic events along the way. Life brings us these events. We either have the ability to resource ourselves and develop resiliency and growth as a result of these events, or we are overwhelmed to some degree and we create a larger traumatic memory and holding of the events.
We have a perception, or belief, about the event, and we memory the event. It may be viewed as being traumatic, or not. The traumatic perception or belief begins to inform how we react to future triggers of the memory. This becomes shadow grief which is held as individual memories and these memories usually grow into a larger and more cumbersome composite grief memory in the flesh (subconsciousness) over time.
If shadow grief is held, we then cover all of the grief with the next higher emotional frequency which is shadow fear. We have fear of the unpleasant growing grief, and we embrace fear to keep ourselves from having to deal with our grief. If we knew how to deal with the grief, we probably would, but we were never taught that technique of trauma release, and so we reflexively assume the psychic posturing which fear provides.
The fear can become so great that we must medicate it with shadow desire. Desire is the next higher emotion state that we use to cover the fear-grief complex. We turn to some shadow ways of expressing the shadow desire energetic, such as all of the “aholisms.” There is workaholism, shopaholism, sexaholism, gambleaholism, alcoholism, over-eating-aholism and many other types of aholisms, such as rageaholism and controlaholism.
Interestingly enough, some of these addictive tendencies are enhanced by neurotransmitter mutations in one’s gene carrier status.
These behaviors become the addictive patterns that we do to medicate and placate our deeper pain. An addiction is just any behavior that we do which a result of a fear of internal growth. It is a default mechanism and a path of self sabotage.
The next higher emotion frequency in this lineage of chaos is shadow anger. We use shadow anger to keep people scared of us so that they won’t see our addictions and underlying pain. We are also angry at ourselves for having these hurtful problems and not being able to do any better with them.
If we don’t transform the pain, then we will transmit the pain in one, or 2, or both ways…
The anger often comes out as rage which we can hurl out there. This hurts others, and causes us to feel more guilt and shame. Another method we employ to manage the anger is simply to push the anger-desire-fear-grief complex back into the inner world that it came from. Both of these forms of pain transmission…to the outer and inner world… create more pain and more complications.
The next shadow emotion that we use to put over all of this held emotion complex and hide it away in our make-believe pretension is shadow pride. We use the shadow pride as a facade to fool ourselves and everyone else into thinking that we are OK. This shadow pride then develops into degrees of narcissism. We use this shadow pride to assuage and prop up our self image concerns, and get everyone else to recognize and acknowledge us in some meaningless positive ways so as to mollify and placate our lingering self doubts.
The psychic energy required to hold this complex inside creates the weariness of depression. Depression is just an energy vacuum resulting from all of the repressed and suppressed shadow emotions which lurk in our subconsciousness. These psychic holdings are seeking clarity and evolution. The end result of such weariness in the psyche is summarized by the emotion state known as apathy. Apathy is even lower in frequency than is grief. The words apathy and depression are synonymous.
So, the traumatic grief memories beget fear. The fear begets desire. The desire begets anger. The anger begets pride. In time, if we do not let go of and heal these feelings and the memories which created them, we fall into apathy. Most people just revolve around in these lower case emotions, continually expressing, or repressing them, in their shadow format. Most people who live in the dissociation of industrial societies are traumatized, and they operate in the shadow for all of their lives. Furthermore, the majority of such people are not even aware of how much pain they are in.
If we become aware of what these shadow emotions feel like in the flesh, we can just observe the feeling states in all of their composite presentations and then begin to ask the emotion specific questions that we need to be asking ourselves which will help us to change the shadow feeling/emotion into the utilitarian format of using the emotion to help us protect and heal our lives.
If you can feel it, you can heal it. If you cannot feel it because you do not want to feel it, then you cannot heal it. No one else can heal it for you either; especially those who would give you a little slip of paper with a Rx for some numbing agents written thereon.
We have emotions to protect and to heal our lives. That is the purpose of emotions in our life. Emotions are inherently good and useful. Transformed shadow emotions are tools of health and happiness.
Each of these 6 shadow emotions (apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, and pride) has about 30 or 40 different synonymous feeling states which I have listed as words on 6 separate sheets of paper. Those pages with all of those words on them are how I help people inventory and understand what they are feeling, and also what they should practice doing with what it is that they are feeling.
We feel emotions in the body. We do not feel emotions in the brain. We think about them in the brain, and this is often when the trouble starts. You can read the Journal “Minding your Mind” for some further perspective on our tendency for addictive thinking patterns.
With a clarified perspective on our emotion states, we should be able to take it all the way home to the emotional origins of the trauma memories in the flesh. These fractures in our human lives are actually how the Light gets in. This whole human journey process is about healing. The cracks and trauma of our human condition are OK, and they have to be embraced.
You will need to forgive your own humanity at some point.
So, I inventory people on their shadow feeling states in an exercise which brings clarity to the emotion confusion of these shadow states. Then I teach them the simple questions to ask to help shift the shadow emotion into its utilitarian expression. This takes practice. There is no good quick fix for decades of such individual story development, but there is usually a growing relief of the pain.
I also guide clients through how it is that we come to access higher emotion states in the body; courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, love, joy, and peace. We then define the client’s Primary Motivators through a Heart based exercise.
Seven Primary (Passionate) Motivators are defined. I assist clients in understanding how to create a Vision statement of what they want to manifest. Congruent to this Vision practice is the practice of ongoing emotional clarity. If we hold onto the shadow Grief Box described above, then the Motivators will lie fallow, and will eventually fall out of sight. In order to manifest our gifts in a meaningful and purposeful manner we have to be able to access higher emotional frequencies.
Basically, we have the emotion of grief to be able to let go of what hurts. This requires forgiveness. Forgiveness is the only way we heal. Forgiveness allows us to reach into our emotional toolbox and guidance system for the sake of a higher manifestation of what we really want that is in alignment with our unique gifts.
It is one thing to realize that we have some grief to forgive. It can be another thing to experience a true cleansing catharsis of the traumatic memories which we hold so tightly in our Grief Box.
The Grief Box should be honored as the construct of our lives that it is. It is OK to honor it with some compassion, non judgment, forgiveness, and self love. Then it becomes easier to manage the shadow emotions held in the Grief Box and to move on into the higher emotion states of manifesting a healed and happy life.
We step out of our old story, and we access courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is just moving on into the adventure despite having the fear. We never want to give up our fear. Utilitarian fear is there to alert us that we may be in danger. Fear needs alot of clarity or else we live our life being startled, alarmed, and triggered…or overwhelmed, isolated, and apathetic…or both.
Most people I work with have a foot on the gas and a foot on the brake all of the time. It creates chaos in the Heart electromagnetics. This chaotic signaling informs the flesh and the DNA. It gets interesting for the client when I show them their Heart frequencies on a biofeedback interface, and how that relates to what is going on in their body as symptom states and disease states.
The healed Heart attracts the experiences of our gifts, passions, and longings. Mysteries unfold from the Light of your eyes. Meanwhile, your brain actually has plenty of other things to do which keep it busy.
A few more facts about the Heart
The primary intuitive center is the Heart. As the central focal point of our multidimensional existence, the Heart is our most profound and important quantum instrument. It is the site of our central organizing intelligence. Aside from beating some 100,000 times a day to move blood around inside of our body, the Heart is receiving and broadcasting information beyond dimensional space and time. The Heart is the most important of our multidimensional centers. We are multidimensional beings.
As the most powerful electromagnetic center in our body, the Heart is 5000 times more powerful than the brain, which runs a distant 3rd to the Heart. The second most powerful organ of electromagnetic transmission after the Heart is the eyes. Your eyes are not just receiving energy…they are also transmitting quanta packets of information. This light energy is called ideoretinal light. Think about that as you hold your gaze with others. If you can listen and if you can see, then you can know yourself in the mirror of others with whom you share space.
The Heart is so much more than a neuromuscular pump. It is an amazing neural center, and is arguably the most vital of all of our neural centers. Studies conducted by the HeartMath Institute show that the heart electromagnetic state is informing our cells and DNA in a continual fashion as to its own state of coherence and high heart rate variability, or in a manner of non-coherence and a more chaotic heart rate variability pattern.
Heart rate variabilty (HRV) is arguably the most important and prognostic of all of the vital signs. It is not commonly assessed. The reader is advised to investigate the studies, educational material, and technology offered at the HeartMath Institute. In the link on HRV, please do take a couple of minutes to view the short video from HeartMath and consider downloading the free e-book which is offered at the end of this short viewing.
If emotional states are a powerful epigenetic factor in our healthy DNA expression, then the Heart may be viewed as the governor of how the emotional energetics are broadcast to the cellular matrix and DNA.
Emotional patterning is held in memory all throughout our flesh by a process which is often referred to as “cellular memory.” This terminology, while seeming intuitively palpable, is still somewhat vague. A more practical way to consider how “cellular memory” works is to consider the functional aspects of our major energetic zones, known as chakras. The term “chakra” is a Sanskrit word which means “wheel.” Chakras are viewed as the inner energetic wheels of our lives, and are the functional and anatomic centers of energetic repose in our physical and electromagnetic lives.
Your Chakras
Our body is an intuitive instrument with an array of marvelous intuitive centers known as chakras.
After studying chakra anatomy, function, pathology, and trauma for the past 4 decades of my life, I do know of some good resources on this vast and important subject.
I want to draw the reader’s attention to the work of Anodea Judith. I consider all of her writings on this subject to be the very best, especially Eastern Body, Western Mind: Psychology and the Chakra System as a Path to the Self (1996). I regard this text as the most important one for any student of the vital subject of chakras. This writing will assist your understanding of traumatology. Her video entitled “The Illuminated Chakras–A Visionary Voyage Into Your Inner Worlds” (2004) is also excellent, and is probably the best introduction to the subject that I know of. The visual effects and script make it so.
In all of the surgeries I used to perform I never was able to “identify” a chakra when inside of a body cavity, but I could sense their field presence. For instance, while removing a person’s rectum for rectal cancer, I never “saw” a first chakra…but…it is there, just beyond one’s normal visual ability. When operating for pancreatic cancer, I never saw a third chakra…but…it is there. I used to feel and think about chakras while doing surgeries. I wonder if other surgeons ever think about chakras.
I view chakras as the energetic zones in our bodies which serve as the interface of the conscious mind and the subconscious mind in the body, and serve to align our subtle body with the superconscious mind. Chakras may be thought of from the standpoint of their individual functional roles which have been well outlined in many texts. I have mentioned the best overall text above.
An easy way to conceptualize chakras anatomically is to consider the important associated nerve centers.
The autonomic nervous system ganglia complexes of sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves correlate well with the physical zones of chakras 1 through 5 in our body. Chakras 6 and 7 are brain centered zones. From chakras 1 through 7, the important nerve centers are: 1) the coccygeal plexus, 2) the sacral plexus, 3) the celiac (solar) plexus, 4) the cardiac plexus, 5) the cervical plexus, 6) the mid brain centers, and 7) the cerebral cortex.
Each of these nerve centers carries the memories of our entire existence from our pre-birth life into and through this life.
In Passing…
Closing comments relate to the new terminology of the exposome, a term which was used above at a couple of places in this writing. This word term refers to the entire umbrella of all environmental factors (software) which comprise epigenetic changes and influences, but do not directly tamper with the innate hardware of our DNA make-up. Epigenetic control of our DNA is part and parcel of the exposome concept.
Epigentic control refers to internal and external environmental signals which end up altering regulatory histone protein conformations around the DNA. This allows for the exposure of DNA from the histone complexes so that the DNA can be transcribed into RNA. The hardware of our DNA itself does nothing. Acetylation of DNA at different sites allows for reading and transcription into RNA. The all-important methylation at DNA sites allows for repression of the transcription process. We don’t want our DNA to be read and transcribed inappropriately, as happens in the chaos of cancer cell dynamics.
You can think of DNA as a long term memory system, and you can think of RNA, which carries DNA’s message to the cellular cytoplasmic ribosome for protein formation via RNA translation, as a short term memory system. In the common paradigm of biochemical parlance, the sole function of DNA is to code for structural and functional proteins (enzymes) that allow us to have physical mechanical shape and biochemical life.
This environmental software influence known as the exposome is also be passed on through generations. The exposome considers all of the complex interactions between the genes themselves and all of the epigenetic environmental factors which activate or suppress gene expression.
Impairments resulting from innumerable prenatal chemical exposures can be passed down through multiple generations via the epigenetic inheritance of the exposome causing alterations in gene expression.
Important landmark events which form some of our epigenetic composite arise from the imprinting which occurs at subtle and biochemical levels at key junctures in our early cellular life: insemination of the egg, implantation of the fertilized ovum in the uterine lining, discovery of the pregnancy by the mother, the pregnancy, the birth experience, the bonding experience with the mother, the first year of life, and the preverbal period of infancy and toddler hood.
The sum total of these exposures and what our parents were exposed to before our conception, our time in utero, and our time after birth is now known as the exposome. This is just a term which refers to all epigenetic influences of the subtle or not so subtle sort which can effect our gene expression.
We have all been exposed to innumerable influences, and so we are all mutants from the perfect wild type of “normalcy.”
It is also true that we all come from a Divine source. Yet many of us find it hard to just be who we are. It feels too ordinary and too insignificant.
Great people are usually humble because they accept that they draw from another Source. Their genius is not so much of their own making as it is a gift which they are privileged to channel. Such people do not really need to concoct an identity or brand for themselves. Their secret lies in discovering and enjoying the identity which they already have.
We are all like light bulbs. If we are unscrewed from our Source energy, our light immediately is darkened.
Perhaps a closing quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance would be nice for the exposome of your daily tinkering…
“Insist on yourself…never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession…Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.”
Just remember…a handful of common sense is more valuable than a bushel of learning.
Onward…
Signing off from Crestone…and Beyond