“Good as new” — that’s what we say when something is repaired so well that we can’t even tell that a repair was needed. Yet, if you look closely enough, a repair rarely as good as new: a sewed piece of clothing has stitches, a rust patch on the body of a car has seems which are buffed out and painted over, and a healed wound has scar tissue. But if the repair is “good as new,” it works perfectly and isn’t noticeable.
You’ve certainly healed of a few injuries during your life. If you have a serious injury, such as a tendon tear or a severe sprain, you may feel the effects of the not quite as good as new repair in the form of stiffness. Any scar is stiff. Perfectly supple tissue is usually original tissue, or non-emergency repairing that doesn’t require scarring. On the cellular level, complete repair happens all the time, but when the structure of the tissue is disrupted, repair is less perfect. Like a tear in a piece of clothing, the replacement fabric isn’t quite interwoven with the original threads quite the same as before.
Athletes know this quite well. Football players reach a point rather early in life when they must retire, because they have taken enough bodily damage that their physical abilities are diminished. The more damage happens to the fabric of tissue, the more difficult a truly complete repair becomes. The body has amazing repair facilities, but they can’t completely repair beyond a certain limit.
The global topical pain relief market is over $10 billion, largely because of joint and muscle aches and pains. What causes joint pain? Although it is necessary for healing, the cause is inflammation. Swelling, stiffness, and heat are all symptoms of that inflammation. If the healing is successful, the inflammation diminishes and joint mobility is restored. If not successful, the immune system doesn’t give up trying — this can result in chronic swelling and pain.
Inflammation is not a pure process; that is, it doesn’t heal without doing some damage on its own. Immune cytokines are like trained soldiers that can swoop in and do a lot in a small amount of time, but in the process trample the countryside, break into buildings, and otherwise wreak some havoc to accomplish their mission. Initial swelling and stiffness are signs of this collateral damage. In a successful operation, they mop up after themselves and there is little evidence that they were ever there. But when the inflammation is chronic, because it is trying to deal with daily stress or a never-ending onslaught of toxins, there will also be continual collateral damage. And over time, that damage could become significant. We know with arthritis for instance, permanent joint damage can be done by the immune system which was called in to a no-win battle.
Now, if inflammation can do that to joints, imagine what it does elsewhere in the body. Stiffness isn’t just a problem for joints. For example, if a heart valve becomes stiff, it won’t work effectively and the heart cannot pump efficiently. All tissues can become stiff, because they are all held together with an extracellular matrix (ECM). Chronic inflammation causes the accumulation of fibrous connective protein components in and around inflamed tissues.
You may not need more fiber
When you have a wound, connective tissue is needed to hold the damaged area together. A scar is a very strong, stiff tissue to bind a wounded area. The more severe the damage, the more fibrous connections are needed to make a strong repair. What happens when the wound is spread out over a large area? This is the way systemic inflammation appears to the body. Inflammation is a repair mechanism. Chronic inflammation is ongoing wound repair happening all throughout the body. Repairs are generally made stronger than the original, in an attempt to harden the tissue against future damage. But hardening tissue that was designed to be flexible and supple makes it stiff and less responsive to mechanical stress.
The new tissue may be stronger than before, but it isn’t as good as new. This stiffness can have serious but predictable consequences: a stiff heart valve is not nearly as efficient as a flexible value. You might not, however, expect cancer to be a consequence of stiffness from chronic inflammation. What’s the connection to cancer?
Everyone needs a support system
Tissue is not just a mass of cells. Like a building needs framing, your tissues need infrastructure to support the cells in a useful pattern. This is the primary function of the extracellular matrix. The ECM is composed largely of proteins and glycosaminoglycans (GAGs — negatively charged polysaccharide compounds) which cells produce. A spider builds its own web, and cells produce their ECM. Some of the proteins they produce are fibrous, functioning like studs in housing construction. They provide strength, but when too many are produced it prevents the ECM from remaining flexible and fully functional.
The ECM is not used just for physical support. It also provides a signaling structure. Have you ever turned two paper cups with a tight string between them into a telephone? The string provides a path for the sound waves to travel from one cup to the other. The ECM provides a transmission system for cell signals.
Cells attach to the EMC with ligands, which protrude out from the cell and can communicate signals through the cell membrane. Both mechanical stress (pulling or pushing) and biochemical/bioelectrical signals cause reactions through the ligands which then cause cellular reactions — everything affecting the ligand is a signal. So there isn’t as much difference between mental stress, physical stress, and protein signaling as you might expect. They are all signals, and all have an impact on cell function. If that impact is negative, cells may become dysfunctional.
“Human malaises including connective tissue disorders, muscular dystrophy, fibrosis, and cancer are all extracellular matrix-driven diseases.” This statement appears in an article published in Matrix Biology, the journal of the International Society for Matrix Biology, in which the researchers explain that various matrix components interact with cell surface receptors to aid cancer development and tumor growth. This is further developed in a research article published in Cancers(Basel), where researchers from the Department of Advanced Transdisciplinary Sciences, Faculty of Advanced Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan explain how mechanotransduction, which is the conversion of mechanical forces to biochemical signaling in the cells, causes changes in the phenotype, or cell epigenetic behavior, that can lead to cancer.
The cancer stem cell (CSC) initially develops with phenotype changes in normal stem cells that progressively lead to the CSC formation and multiplication over cell generations. It is the signaling that tells cells to change behavior, and constant signaling pushes them into permanent changes. When the ECM becomes overly stiff, the mechanotransduction signals push the cell towards cancer.
Cancer builds its dream environment
You can get an idea of what environment cancer prefers by looking at the tumor environment, because cancer creates the best environment it can to perpetuate itself. The tumor is low oxygen, high acid, and stiff. The characteristic hard lump of a tumor demonstrates this stiffness. So it should be no surprise that ECM stiffness helps cancer development. In a research article published in ACS (American Cancer Society) Biomaterials Science & Engineering, researchers cultured liver cancer stem cells (LCSCs) in a stiff hydrogel structure and found that this structure significantly promoted “stemness”, or stem cell-like behavior, over a soft matrix structure. They noted that the “Yes-associated protein” (YAP), a particular genetic transcription factor noted for promoting cancer, appears to be activated by the stiff matrix.
Don’t be so rigid
Tying this all together: chronic inflammation leads to cellular damage which causes changes in the extracellular matrix, leading to a stiffer, more fibrous matrix. This matrix causes signals into the cells attached to their portion of the ECM, prompting them to change behavior to accommodate their environment, which they experience through their signals. The epigenetic changes lead to further changes, which finally result in cancer stem cell formation. Then these CSCs go build stiff houses for themselves to make their rigid environment even more stiff.
Moving keeps joints limber. Exercise, good nutrition, and hydration go a long way to keeping the ECM limber. But stress, leading to chronic inflammation, is the worst antagonist because the damage caused is throughout the body, continually leading to EMC stiffness. That leads to most diseases, including cancer. So every day, every week, every year that you can keep inflammation low, you are reducing your risk of all disease, especially cancer.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
Everything at the cellular level works by signals received from the mental, emotional and physical environment around the cells. What you are thinking about, both subconsciously and consciously, along with what you eat, drink, breathe, how much you move, and how much you sleep all dictate the signals going into the cells.
Just look at the signaling proteins in the cell membranes like antennas that are receiving information from the environment around them. We must remember that the mental and emotional environment is a much stronger influence than the physical environment. They all must be addressed, but if you do not get to the root of the mental, emotional signaling then you do not heal, you do not stay in health.
Where do the mental and emotional signals originate from? The answer is always the brain. The brain takes the electromagnetic energy produced by the subconscious and conscious mind, and turns that into signals that are transmitted at the speed of light to every cell in the body, which has antennas to receive the signal, and everything at the cellular level works by frequencies it receives. Certain frequencies received by the antennas will turn cellular functions on, and the other frequencies will turn cellular function off, so the frequencies that are generated by the brain — which received them from the subconscious and conscious mind — completely dictates what goes on at the cellular level. Your 50 trillion cells all have antennas that are reacting instantaneously to the mental, emotional and physical environment signals that are coming to them.
How does cancer form? It forms very simply with certain frequencies generated by the brain as it translates the electromagnetic energy from the thoughts. This is the primary avenue because this energy is up to 90% of what controls cell signaling. The rest of the signals come from the physical environment, including the diet and lifestyle so if this is how cells become either healthy or diseased, including cancer stem cell formation, then how does chemotherapy and radiation therapy affect the signaling and the extracellular matrix? It is obvious: numerous studies have shown that chemotherapy and radiation therapy stimulate cancer stem cells to become very aggressive and mobile, leading to metastasis. Why? This is because the frequencies from these therapies being received by the antennas are highly inflammatory and toxic, so cancer stem cells must adapt quickly to this environment: they react by producing next generation cancer cells that are chemotherapy and radiation resistant; along with that the cancer stem cells are stimulated to migrate through the stiff extracellular matrix (that was caused from the chronic inflammation) throughout the body and set up new cancer colonies at a much faster rate.
How can someone heal with this type of conventional therapy? Many times they will have a short-term improvement. Tumors appear to shrink, scans appear to be clear, but all this therapy made was a more inflammatory fibrous extracellular matrix and more aggressive and mobile cancer stem cells, which are starting new cancer colonies more quickly in different parts of the body. This is why this treatment is not comprehensive enough. This is because it makes the initial environment that caused the cancer in the first place much worse. So how can you permanently heal when you’re making the conditions that caused the cancer in the first place much worse, much more inflammatory, much more toxic and much more rigid? The simple answer is: you cannot. We must never confuse a short term temporary gain with a permanent, long-term loss as a good choice for complete healing.
Transforming the mental, emotional and physical environment that sends signals to every cell in the body which produces health, strength and life is the foundation of our Revolution New Medicine Protocol® that has helped people heal all disease for the last 40 years.
In the summary, your subconscious and conscious thoughts are received in the brain and then transmitted to the cells to affect all cellular function. This is 90% of the messages being received by the cell antennas. The remaining 10% of the signals are produced in the body itself as a reaction to what you eat, drink, breathe, how much you exercise and how much sleep you get. These factors control all the signals that control all 50 trillion cells, so to heal any symptom, condition or disease, including cancer, all you have to do is change the messages coming from the subconscious and conscious mind and what you eat, drink, breath, what type of exercise program you’re on, and what your sleep schedule and quality is. This is how health is made or lost. This is how healing occurs or does not occur.
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.
