Your computer, phone, or tablet has something called an “operating system” — OS for short. That OS spends much of its time monitoring your apps, cleaning up garbage, and fixing problems when they occur, all usually without you even knowing it is happening. Keeping everything running smoothly, including itself, is hard work for the OS, but it only complains when it needs your intervention. At the heart of keeping everything smooth is “error correction.” The OS has a pattern for what the software should be doing and how it should be doing it. When that pattern is broken, the OS works to bring operation back to normal. This process was designed by programmers to keep the computer from crashing — at least most of the time. This is “artificial intelligence”, which mimics the real intelligence of our bodies which keeps them running according to their design.
Getting to our current state of artificial intelligence has required the programming efforts of many people over many years, yet the intelligence built in to our own bodies is still partially a mystery. But one thing is obvious: there is a lot of intelligence across many bodily systems designed into us. The error correcting, problem-solving, pattern restoring abilities of our bodies are amazing. We mess with the body’s operating system without fully understanding it. The biggest enemy to the intelligence of the body is the interference we inflict on it. We see this especially in dealing with cancer, where we have increasingly complex techniques to fight it, but all our efforts are still doing damage to the healthy body, sometimes more than the disease itself.
Drugs — the toxic solution
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 48.6% of Americans use one or more prescription drugs. The Mayo Clinic claims the number is closer to 70%, although they include vaccines in the count. Of those taking prescription medications, the average number of medications taken per person is four. The number rises dramatically with age, and according to the Health Policy Institute of Georgetown University, 91% of people over the age of 80 are taking prescription drugs.
If these drugs were completely ineffective, the statistics would be lower. People appear to be gaining benefit from these drugs, and sometimes the benefit is life-extending. Take the problem of blood vessel plaque buildup which is reducing blood flow. The problem can get serious enough to result in a stroke or heart attack. Blood thinners may extend someone’s life under these conditions. However, if the plaque could be cleaned up and proper blood flow restored, or better yet, the buildup never occurred, the blood thinners never be necessary. These drugs are band-aids when disease has set in; they are short-circuits of normal metabolic functions, rather than improvements in the real health of the individual. Because they are short-circuits, they will inevitably have “side effects”, which are indications of the damage the drugs are causing.
We have traded the simple toxins resulting from poor hygiene in previous centuries for the more sophisticated toxins of modern drugs and chemicals. But toxins always hinder the body’s normal function. The body’s error correction protocols tell it to get rid of the toxins. Prescription drugs are always of a high enough dose to overwhelm the body’s normal detoxification processes, otherwise the drugs would be removed before having an effect, and this loads down and diverts the ability to deal with other toxins. So while drugs may achieve their goals of changing some metabolic functions, they do so at a great cost to the body. The better answer is to achieve those goals through proper, natural channels.
Are there non toxic drugs? Sure — nature is full of them. Various plants have phytochemicals which can be particularly helpful to human health. They don’t work by attempting to short-circuit normal functions; they enhance them. Increasingly, modern medicine is looking at drugs and techniques to enhance natural metabolism, recognizing the limitations of toxic approaches.
Immunotherapy — is it a better solution?
Immunotherapy attempts to harness the power of the immune system to attack cancer. This recognizes that amping up cell killing, hoping to kill the cancer faster than the rest of the body, is not always the best solution. However, immunotherapy still attempts to make shortcuts, and shortcuts can lead to unexpected and damaging results. Immunotherapy still has side effects. Let’s look at some immunotherapy details:
Targeted Therapy, or monoclonal antibodies: These are lab-grown antibodies which can target proteins that are typical of cancer. That’s great, but as we’ve seen already, many “cancer “ proteins are also made by healthy cells, just that cancer overproduces them. So yes, the antibodies can direct the immune system to target cells with those proteins, but they are also going to hit healthy cells.
Monoclonal antibodies can also be used to bypass immune checkpoints. The body normally has limits on what the immune system can do, so that it does not run amok and kill everything in sight. Some cancer can invoke immune checkpoints and cause the immune system to ignore the cancer cells. The antibodies act as checkpoint inhibitors to overrun those immune limitations, but they also override them for healthy tissue. Cancer is attacked, and so is the healthy tissue. This technique sacrifices health for cancer destruction. The side effects are allergic reactions, because the immune system is also attacking the healthy cells in the body.
Interferons used to fight cancer are lab-grown proteins used to alert your body to the presence of pathogens. Again, the immune system is put on alert, and the cytokines start doing damage to both cancer and healthy tissue. Interleukins are similar in that these lab-grown proteins are also used to signal the immune system to be hyperactive, producing collateral damage. These two types of proteins are used in “non-specific immunotherapies” — the name tells you that these are not going to be precise in targeting cancer and leaving healthy tissue alone.
Oncolytic virus therapy is a creative use of a certain virus that is injected into the tumor. The virus turns the cells it attacks into virus factories, which breaks apart the cells and causes the immune system to attack the virus and the byproducts of the broken cells. So long as they attack cancer cells, and normal cells are spared, all is well. Unfortunately, they don’t stop with only cancer cells, and healthy cells get hit with the virus, causing the immune system to go after those as well. The precision isn’t there to prevent healthy tissue destruction.
T-cell therapy is an attempt to re-program immune cells from your own body to recognize cancer. Cells are taken and receptors are added to them in a lab which makes the T-cells sensitive to cancer. They are returned to your body and go to work. But, the results are questionable, and fail entirely for some patients. The T-cells are still not sparing healthy tissue, and can cause significant inflammation.
Your body is very complex, and the interaction between your immune system and healthy tissue is complicated. Many pathways are involved which overlap, especially in cancer, and blunt lab-grown adjustments are missing the mark and causing other damage. Although they are not simple toxins like chemotherapy, immunotherapy techniques still are inflammatory and are toxic. We are still not sophisticated enough to reach down into the intricate inner workings of the body without potentially negatively affecting the healthy cells in the process. But the body is that sophisticated, and knows how to return to its blueprint.
Getting closer
Some techniques are being developed to use natural immune cells without reprogramming. This avoids some of the dangers of immune cell modification. Published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers at Northwestern University are increasing the cancer fighting ability of natural immune system cells by culling out “exhausted” tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) from a patient, leaving only the more active TILs and returning them to the patient. They had significant improvements in cancer reduction in animal studies.
That appears to be a step forward in avoiding the use of toxic options to fight cancer. But these TILs were produced in the body, proving that it knows how to fight cancer. Why are some of them “exhausted”, and why aren’t more being produced naturally?
Using natural body therapy
We can influence the body to deal better with cancer by truly natural means. The difference is not to attempt to change the operating system of our bodies, but instead instruct it to do more of what it is designed to do. Decreasing toxicity, not increasing it, lets the body work much more effectively. Improving circulation, including the movement of lymphatic fluid which is so crucial to immune system function, helps the body do its job better. Getting enough sleep along with good exercise helps the body to actively combat disease, then rest from the effort and come back strong the next day. Reducing mental stress keeps the body from diverting its resources to fight phantoms so it can deal with real problems. Good hydration allows the cells to flush toxins better and perform normal metabolic functions unhindered. Studies abound showing how all these factors improve cancer fighting immune system activity.
Published in eLife is one such study. There, researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden first conducted animal studies of the T-cell activity of exercising versus non-exercising mice. They found slowed cancer growth and decreased mortality in those exercising regularly. They even transferred T-cells from the exercising group to the non-exercising group, and saw reduction in cancer in those mice as well. Then they did human studies to verify similar results: they found the same metabolites and active cancer fighting immune cells in the exercising humans. Exercise enhanced the immune systems to better fight cancer in all cases. Lab enhancement wasn’t needed — the body did the enhancement.
Another study, published in Brain, behavior, and immunity, researchers at the University of Lübeck in Germany studied interleukin-7 (IL-7) levels in humans during awake and sleeping periods. They found that IL-7 was dramatically increased with sleep, particularly REM sleep. This meant that T-cell function was enhanced naturally with REM sleep.
The real thing is better than a lab
The closer science moves towards using natural metabolic functions, the better results. But these are still artificial means. The body already has the tools it needs, and the best enhancement of those tools is done through natural means. Shortcuts require less work, but are artificial. Help your body do what it was designed to do, instead of trying to take shortcuts that also short-circuit your body.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
How can you improve on an operating system that has far more complexity than any computer that could ever be built? This is your body — created to keep you healthy and live a long life, IF, and I mean IF, you do the regular maintenance on the operating system. This is the 7 Basic Steps of Total Health, or we can call them the 7 Basic Steps of Maintenance and Repair. It is amazing that we take care of our cars by putting the proper fuel in, getting oil changes, and maintenance items serviced regularly IF we want that car to be in good shape and drivable in 100 years. Notice how the antique cars are taken care of so well and they still drive well and look great. How much maintenance and repair does the average antique car owner put into their cars? I am sure quite a bit because they want it to always look good and always be drivable. Now there is the other type of car owners, the ones that do not maintain their car practically at all. They drive it doing basically as little maintenance as possible and basically trade it out for a new one every two years. Nice, but not realistic. If that car was your body you could not just trade it for a new one because it is the only one you will ever get. So let us all become like the antique car owner and cherish the car — take the best care of it so it will look good, feel good and work very well when it is very old. Do not wait for a scientist to create a magic bullet because there is none that will compare to your own body’s healing system. Instead of reacting when the car falls apart and trying to do a quick fix, become proactive today to help this car do what it was designed to do on its own- heal and live in 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.
