In the early days of video games, when players didn’t have cell phones or powerful computers, to get the best play experience they often went to arcades, which were public places that housed pay-for-play machines. Arcades could only house a few machines, and the dedicated game machines were expensive and bulky, so only a few games became extremely popular and well known. One of the most popular was Missile Command.
The idea of the game was that nuclear missiles were raining down on cities that you would defend with anti-missile launchers. You could only fire a few missiles per second, so you had to make your shots count. Just one catch: as the game progressed, the rate of incoming missiles accelerated, while your ability to fire back did not. Eventually, there were just too many incoming missiles to defend against. To make matters worse, some incoming missiles could split into multiple missiles in mid air, making even more targets to destroy before they hit your cities. At some point, defense became impossible and you would lose — you knew that when you started, but were attempting to destroy as many missiles as possible to get the highest score.
In your body, your brain is firing off signals rather than missiles, but the signaling rate is incredible. About 100 billion neurons are each firing off 5 to 50 messages per second. The amount of signaling your body receives from the brain is simply mind-boggling. So what happens to all those signals?
This is where some simplification occurs. Cells have a vast, but still limited, set of actions that they can take. These are metabolic pathways, and there are calculated to be about 135 pathways in humans — this may be a low number because some have likely not been discovered yet. Nonetheless, those billions of brain signals have to work through relatively few pathways. Although pathways are limited, multiple pathways may be active at the same time to varying degrees, making the exact cell reaction to signals virtually impossible to calculate since the possibilities would increase exponentially to near infinity: there are nearly infinite combinations in these pathways. The innate wisdom built into the cell is incomprehensible, so it is quite impossible to make a medication or a drug that will positively impact these pathways over the long term. This is not only because of all the near infinite combinations, but because the body is constantly adapting and re-adapting to the environment every second. If you take a medication that opposes the thoughts generated and the emotions produced by those thoughts — those perceptions and beliefs — then that medication will not have any effect because the thoughts are being generated 24 hours a day every day, whereas the medication is taken once to twice a day for only a period of time with a tremendous amount of side effects. All these thought patterns that are produced continuously generate electromagnetic waves, which are signals to every cell in the body, which then change outcome of the nearly infinite biochemical pathway combinations in a split second. The medication is like putting one drop of water on a constantly growing and expanding forest fire — it will have no effect.
Cancer research tries to isolate pathways and determine which are going to aid the production of cancer and which will retard it. These “anti-missile” attempts cannot accurately defend your body against cancer — there are too many possible combinations of pathways and resulting cellular reactions for it to succeed without excessive, even deadly, damage. Basically, drug-based cancer treatments are sledgehammers trying to kill a fly — which just happens to fly near the speed of light. They may do so much damage to normal cell metabolism when trying to thwart cancer cell metabolism that they do more harm than the cancer. Researchers are constantly trying to fine-tune each therapy, but they only manage to turn the sledgehammer into a mallet – it’s still a very blunt tool at best.
It begins here
Cells in our bodies are meant to be in a community, and they connect with other cells in that community through signaling. While there is some self-signaling happening, our cells are mostly receiving signals from the outside. They receive signals with receptors sitting on the cell membrane and going through it, which mirror what they receive from the outside to the inside of the cell. The signal doesn’t itself go through the cell membrane, but essentially it is replicated to the inside of the cell by the receptor. A key receptor family is RTK, or receptor tyrosine kinase. This family of receptors receive signals relating to cell growth, proliferation, and death.
The signal now triggers a cellular pathway, acting somewhat like a biochemical key. The pathway then alters the function of the cell – its metabolism, growth, differentiation, and cell death in particular. Key to this is the process known as phosphorylation. Here, a phosphate, which is a phosphorous and oxygen combination, is attached to a protein molecule. These phosphates are charged and reactive, and can be broken off and passed around to other molecules, changing their function. They are key to the biochemical reactions of enzymes involved in cell metabolism.
A prime pathway in health and disease, especially cancer, is the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway. This pathway can control both cell growth and cell death, and is activated by hormones and growth factors. PI3k is phosphoinositide 3-kinase or phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase, where the inositol ring is phosphorylated – notice both “inositol” and “phosphor” in the names. The inositol ring is a chain of carbon with various OH (oxygen/hydrogen) groups attached around the chain. Phosphorylation can occur on three of the free hydroxyl groups, making seven different phosphoinositide species, each resulting in a different cellular reaction. The particular PI3K molecule formed then produces protein kinase B, abbreviated as Akt: activated PI3K phosphorylates lipids on the plasma membrane, forming phosphatidylinositol (4,5)-bisphosphate (PIP2) and phosphatidylinositol (3,4,5)-trisphosphate (PIP3) — and PIP3 activates Akt. Finally completing the pathway is mTOR, or “mammalian Target Of Rapamycin.” The full process is the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway, but at each stage of the pathway, different species or versions can occur, changing the effect of the total pathway. Each part of the process has numerous versions, and like the missiles breaking apart to form multiple targets in the arcade game, the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway is multi-function – some of these functions aid cancer, but many are vital outcomes required for normal cell activity and survival.
To further complicate matters, the chain reaction of PI3K to Akt can be stopped by “phosphatase and tensin homolog” (PTEN), which dephosphorylates PI3K, preventing the downstream Akt. PTEN is encoded by the PTEN gene, which is considered a tumor suppression gene because it selectively interrupts the pathway. Again, it is impacted by cell signaling. PTEN just further complicates the overall complex PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway.
Yet, cancer treatments are working to control this pathway, with results that are very temporary with many negative side effects. Trying to repair a computer with a jackhammer is more likely to succeed than accurately controlling this pathway with drugs. Shutting down the pathway halts vital cellular function. No, the best chance to impact this pathway is through the signals the cell receives that trigger the pathway.
On the wrong path
Since disruptions of some portion of the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway does impede cancer growth, various PI3K, AKT, and mTOR inhibitor drugs have been developed. In a review article published in Pathology-Research and Practice, researchers promote the opportunity, stating: “The PI3K/Akt/mTOR is a complicated pathway which provides potential targets to be used in targeted cancer therapy.” They recognize the existence of cancer stem cells (CSCs), and can see that this pathway is overactive in CSCs. “However, our current understanding of the exact mechanisms, the pathway regulators, as well as the functions of the pathway in CSCs is limited.” In other words, they are taking a sledgehammer approach.
Some studies are stumbling upon the environmental impact, even while not giving up on drug therapy. Published in Nature, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, conducted animal studies on PI3K inhibitors, but recognized the potential for environmental impacts. Animals given a PI3K inhibitor along with a high-fat (ketogenic) diet had greater tumor shrinkage than mice given the cancer drug alone. As stated by their lead researcher, the study “is important because it shows the complexity of targeting PI3K for cancer therapies and explains why PI3K inhibitors can cause different responses in clinical trials.” It’s not really all that difficult to understand: the diet changed the cellular signaling to the cancer cells. While the researchers were focusing on the PI3K inhibitor, they found an environmental component that was also making a difference.
Some studies are recognizing that inhibiting PI3K is ineffective against cancer. Published in Cell, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, California stated, “We have learned that PI3K transmits important signals that regulate a variety of physiological processes in virtually all tissue types studied to date. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that the development of PI3K inhibitors to treat cancer has been challenged by the emergence of dose-limiting, on-target adverse effects…But in clinical trials of people with solid cancers PI3K inhibitors have not been shown to improve how long people live.” The study did not state whether the failure of PI3K inhibitors to increase lifespan was due to ineffectiveness against the cancer itself, or because of the damage it did to the patients offset any value it had against the cancer. In either case, messing around with the intricacies of this pathway did at least as much harm as good.
The path of hope
The PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway is primarily a pathway of growth and accelerated metabolism. Cancer is all about growth. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that impeding this pathway would slow the growth of cancer. After our prime age, we are not needing growth, we need maintenance. Continuing to signal growth in our bodies, whether by drugs to attempt to recapture our youth, or by stress pushing us into over-revving, means excessive PI3K/Akt/mTOR expression. When we try to counteract it with drugs, we inhibit its proper functions as well. Better to go to the source of the over-expression of this pathway – signaling.
Where do these signals originate? The brain of course, which is the master control for the body. Only the brain has the finesse to tune the signals correctly and manage the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway, or any pathway, correctly. But that will only happen if the signals it sends are good signals: signals of peace, love, calm, and joy. That is how you signal pathways to perform as they are designed to do. That is how you win at the game of life.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
What are cancer stem cells? They are normal stem cells that have adapted to an inflammatory and toxic environment which produced a special type of stem cells that grow very rapidly, but in doing so they sacrificed the unity of conforming to the community of cells called “you” — so essentially, cancer stem cells have become their own self, their own colony, their own organism. So what started out with good intent, to make stronger cells to adapt to this negative environment, had the most detrimental side effect of leaving the community of all the healthy cells all working together as one and instead becoming a completely separate community or organism. This new organism cannot sustain itself apart from the community it came from. So, what it ends up doing is becoming a parasite where it drains the natural resources of the community it originally grew from, destroying both itself and the healthy community that it broke away from — and there is only one way to change this. It cannot be done with medications, drugs, surgeries, radiation, or any other method to destroy it because it is extremely adaptable to live — just like your normal stem cells are. The only way to change this is to change the environment that caused the normal stem cells to become cancer stem cells. This environment is primarily your thoughts, your perceptions, your beliefs, your attitudes, and the emotions that are produced by all of these. This is first and foremost, being 90% of the messaging to the cells in your body. The rest comes from the physical environment, which is what comes into your body and how your body is taken care of. This includes what you eat, what you drink, what you breathe, how much you move, and how and what type of movements you do, also how much rest you give your body — all these add up to the remaining 10%. Together, these affect the complete mental-emotional-physical environment that controls all cell signaling, which means turning on and off cellular function.
Receptors on the cell membrane receive physical biochemical messages from the brain and the nervous system, but even more powerfully, messages that work almost instantaneously are the electromagnetic frequencies emitted by the brain to turn on and off the cell receptors throughout the whole body in a split second. So what do you think is turned into messages in the brain, and the brain signals to the body through, first and foremost, electromagnetic fields and frequencies, and second by the secretion of biomolecules that travel through the nervous system and the blood to reach the cell membrane receptors. So what you think is primary in the cell signaling, secondary is what you eat drink, breathe, and how are you move and rest. They are both important, but not near equally important.
That’s why the study said the ketogenic diet inhibited tumor growth. We need to become wiser. We must treat disease naturally, without producing detrimental side effects that completely erase any benefit from the therapy.
This is how we address every symptom condition a disease with our Revolution New Medicine Protocol®. We always treat the cause, never the effect — we first and foremost balance the mind-brain-body connection because that’s 90% of the signals reaching the cells. Second, we customize the diet, the fluid intake, the oxygen intake, all the possible exercise protocols, along with syncing the body bio-rhythm to all of these, and culminating with the proper sleep pattern. We customize this program for each individual. This is the only way anyone will ever heal and stay healed. You must make sure the 90% +10% that you’re addressing is all done naturally, which only benefits the cells of your body and has no negative side effects whatsoever — without this approach, any results in medicine or alternative medicine will be very temporary.
I’ll give you an example. We’ve had patients that did extremely well initially, doing chemotherapy and immuno therapy; but then, as I stated, the mind-brain-body signaling re-adapts, and the cancer begins to grow even faster and in multiple areas. So the only way to heal is to do everything that benefits the body, and nothing that hurts it in any way. You must make an environment in the body — mentally, emotionally, and physically — that is far superior to the environment that produced the disease, the cancer stem cells, in the first place: the environment which produced all the other cancer cells. And remember: cancer stem cells can never be killed with any conventional therapy, because if they could be, that would kill all the healthy stem cells in your body, which would end your life very quickly. So what’s the answer? Never hurt the body when you’re healing it. Never change the environment negatively, only positively, and absolutely make sure the environment that you make in the body mentally, emotionally, and physically is far superior to the environment that brought forth the disease. Can conventional medicine ever say this? I think not. The body is like the house, so we can end with this: Is this thought, is this food, is this drink, is this action that I’m about to do going to benefit every single cell in my body, every member of my house? Is it going to make a positive mental, emotional, and physical environment for the whole, to enable it to heal — and remain in that health?
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Total Health Institute but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Total Health Institute along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
