Released around the turn of the century, The Matrix is still a hit movie with a mind-bending premise, which calls into question what we call “reality.” In what appears to be normal life in our modern world, a computer programmer finds a recurring program code which doesn’t make sense. Rather than ignore it, he tries to get to the bottom of the mystery. This leads him to a person who tells him that the reality he is living is actually a very complex computer simulation. He is offered a choice: either eat a red pill which will break his connection with the simulation and let him experience the truth, or a blue pill which will return him to his comfortable, although fake, existence. He ultimately decides to know the truth, and his whole perception is completely changed.
While fictional, The Matrix makes the point that “perception is reality” and makes us wonder just how far perception could go in shaping our lives. The bodies we live in are controlled by our brains, and we see evidence that thoughts can change our physical health. What we think can even change our level of physical fitness: in a previously mentioned study, certain hotel room attendants were told that their daily physical work met the Surgeon General’s guidelines for a physically fit lifestyle, while the control group was not told anything. The group who thought they were getting on-the-job physical training lost some excess weight, had better blood pressure, and measured better body mass index than the control group.
If good thoughts can promote health, then depression, chronic stress, or fear can do the opposite. This also appears in research. One study, published in Child Development, links insulin resistance (the starting point of diabetes) and advanced cell aging to childhood stress. Researchers from the University of Georgia, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois collaborated to follow youth, ages 11-18, for almost two decades to ages 25-29 to correlate childhood stress with disease development later in life. They found that, for each year of childhood stress evaluated, immune cell aging increased by .26 years. Insulin resistance was more likely for each year of stress also, although some of this effect may have been caused by the immune cell aging. Nonetheless, the childhood stress, measured as their perception of their chances of a good life in the future, aged them and pushed them towards diabetes faster than those with good life perception.
Although this study did not look at elevated cancer risk due to poor life perception, we know that diabetes and cancer stem in part from the same inflammatory impact of sugar, so we would expect a correlation. And other research confirms this. Published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, researchers from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland took similar demographics to the Child Development study and found that their incidence of cancer mortality was around 12% higher.
Ongoing stress plays havoc with sugar management, leading to many diseases, particularly diabetes, obesity, and cancer. All are on the rise these days, and that implicates modern society. It is tempting to blame toxins, because we are clearly in a toxic world, but many toxins have been identified, limited, or banned over the last few decades, and some environmental toxicity has been reduced. The world is still quite toxic, but counter trends have cleaned up our air, food, and water more than is often credited. Toxicity due to prescription drugs has certainly been on the rise, but that doesn’t account for the recent acceleration in youth disease. Stress is the prime suspect.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
Since World War II we have lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. During WWII, we had doubts we would even win the war. Before that, the Great Depression had much of the population worried about putting enough food on the table for their families. During these turbulent times, according to reports of many who lived through such periods, stress was high at times but not chronically high like today.
Something happened in recent times. In a study published in American Psychologist, a journal of the American Psychological Association, researchers reviewed a two-decade trend from the 1990’s to the 2010’s, where participants reported an average 2% rise in daily stressors, but as much as 61% increase in personal “perceived risks” for their future. This rise in stress occurs during the explosion of mass media during our “Information Age”. Shifting from newspapers and broadcast TV to cable TV and the rise of the Internet, we’ve been rapidly increasing our intake of world news and commentary about subjects which, for the most part, don’t really impact our daily lives, yet raise emotions to high levels. Most recently, the same American Psychological Association reports that 65% of surveyed Americans say “current uncertainty in the nation” causes them ongoing stress, that the “Gen Z” (youngest adults) report a 61% stress level, 56% reported by Millennials, down to 33% reported by the adults older than the Baby Boomers. In other words, stress is highest in youth and gradually drops off the older a person becomes.
Now news media has exploded to such a degree that partisan “experts” and “fact checkers” are telling us what will stoke our emotions to their highest levels, solely to keep us coming back for more rather than switching to another source. Social media is more emotion than fact, and the facts are cherry-picked, so polarized groups hear totally different and opposing facts. Even popular science is questionable these days: global warming, vaccines and masks, the quality of our food supply — more opinion, fuzzy statistics, and omission of opposing viewpoints is reported rather than solid, untainted information, but all reported with high emotion. Even news of far-away Ukraine is causing worry and stress around the globe.
The latest youth stress
A major stressor has appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, that is causing stress and depression in young school-age kids: even before they have developed any sexual maturity, their gender appropriateness is being questioned, mostly through public schools and social media. This is adding to the stress felt in the early years of childhood, and in efforts to “be like everyone else” children are receiving mixed messages which cause great harm with lifelong implications. Children are especially prone to peer pressure and what is viewed as “normal” in the world. Imagine that everyone in the world around you cuts off their left little finger and tells you that means you’re free and a part of them. If you believe that and want to be part of them (the group of being normal like them) and you want to be accepted in their world, then you will follow in their footsteps, falsely believing that you’re free and happy, when you are in the worst bondage — false perception and false reality.
This stressor adds to the bombardment of cell phones and other screen time on kids, replacing personal contact with virtual chats, while there is increasing politicization of kid’s media, including cartoons. Meanwhile, global test scores from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows U.S. students rank 30th place in math education worldwide, well below countries such as Singapore and Macao, and U.S. education rankings are generally falling behind the rest of the world and are now below the global average. In short, we are succeeding in increasing stress on children while simultaneously declining in their education.
How about you and your family?
Stress affects us all, and it is increasing. So is chronic disease. The two are inseparable. Today we are fed a constant stream of “blue pills” which shape and distort our perceptions. Reality, if we can see it, is that life is wonderful and precious. Yes, it is filled with challenges and sorrows at times. But only at times. Perception means to “become aware or conscious of…” We are letting media and their commentary become our perception, rather than the world right around us. There is beauty surrounding us us, acts of love we can pursue to bless people near us, and worthwhile challenges that we can conquer, leading to real accomplishments. Such perceptions lead to our own better health.
But for children, we are called to be their protectors. Your family is precious, and the world around them is rather hostile. What messages are bombarding them? If you want healthy, happy children who you launch into adulthood, are you watching what they are hearing and perceiving? Are you involved?
Since you know that thoughts implanted in your brain, especially in very early life, play back repeatedly and affect you throughout life, don’t forget there are therapies to counter those unconscious, replaying thoughts. You can counter conscious thoughts with love, thankfulness, and meditating on your blessings, but subconscious thoughts are harder to deal with. Taking the “red pill”, dealing with reality, shaping it, and discovering the good, is vital to your health and to those you care about.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
To your cells the only thing that’s real is your perception. How you see your world sets off chemical reactions and signaling molecules that control every cell in your body. Belief systems and perceptions can totally control not only your mental-emotional state but also your physical health.
You have been and always will be a product of your environment. Put a child in unconditional love, raise the child this way and the child will be extremely balanced mentally, emotionally, and physically be very healthy. Now do the opposite: put the same child in a broken home where mother and father are constantly fighting and emitting a lot of toxic energy and the same child will have some degree of anxiety and depression and many more lifelong physical health issues as a result. You ask: is it better for them to grow up in an orphanage with no mother and father? The answer is the same — if it’s not toxicity from physical mother and father, it’s toxicity from other children filled up with the world and the entire world system of fear and doubt, need and lack.
As one thinks and perceives, so they shall become.
What is the point we’re trying to make? Perception is everything, along with belief systems. Your mind and thoughts control your body via your brain. So your thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs store on the hard drive of the brain as programs. These programs emit electrical energy known as brain waves very similar to heart waves picked up by an EKG monitor. So your brain and your heart are very electrical. These electrical impulses are communicated to all the 60 trillion cells in your body. So can you imagine if you have a perception filter of “I’m not lovable enough” or “I am not good enough”. This belief filter is seen by every cell in your body: it becomes an electrical message emitted from the brain to every single one of those 60 trillion cells. This is the biggest stress because it is a foundational core stress.
We live in a world that has the means via the Internet and social media to communicate with us messages 24 hours a day, if we choose to listen to those messages we will become as they are: a world filled with the energy of extreme stress and anxiety, fear and doubt, need and lack.
There is another way and infinitely superior way. In this new way or new medicine we do a new therapy to release the false perceptions and belief systems that are stored in the brain. Look at it like a pressure release valve for the entire system. Then we follow up by programming every cell in the body in the foundation of the unconditional love of God, which is based in truth — not fact, nor media, nor popular opinion. The result is transformation in body, mind, emotions and spirit. The visible results: tumors go away, blood sugar balances, inflammation resolves, toxicity is released, stressed hormones are normalized, and most importantly freedom is restored when one is reunited with the ONE who created us, has always loved us and is always reaching out to to each one of his prodigal son‘s and daughters to come back home to Father’s house.
This is the basis of the new medicine we use with patients with hundredfold results.
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.
