You may think flying cars and submarine cars are merely inventions of science fiction, but both exist today. In Japan, SkyDrive’s electric vehicle take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) received a safety certification that should clear the way for limited public use, and at the Swiss mobility lab Rinsed, the first actual diving car, called the ‘sQuba”, has been successfully tested.
Both of these are true dual use vehicles, capable of working in two very different environments. The same equipment can be used two ways. That equipment shifts functions based on the driver signaling with various controls you would not see on a normal car. And there are many sensors which signal the vehicle how to handle whichever environment it is traveling in.
We have much dual or multi-use equipment in our bodies. Our lungs provide not only respiration, but also power our voice to talk or sing. Our hands can be used to write, to punch, to grasp, or to play an instrument. We are designed with a masterful array of multi-use features, many of which we take for granted, yet the design is quite ingenious.
Is your head or your heart deciding?
We think that only your brain can make decisions, but due to your intricate nervous system, many largely subconscious decisions are being made by two-way communication with your brain and other parts of your body. We expect your brain to control your breathing, your heart rate, and your digestion, but did you ever consider that the reverse is also true? Through your nervous system, those organs are also changing the function of your brain. Some parts of your brain are multi-use, and can be switched to an alternate mode of operation from signals the brain receives from other organs.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai verified this dual-use aspect of a portion of the brain used for decision-making can switch to an internal body monitoring function during periods of arousal, stimulation, or stress. They found that significant increase in heart rate triggered this mode-switching in the brain. Once switched, these brain circuits were not available for decision-making. In other words, stress, even positive stress, through feedback from the heart, can reduce your rational decision-making process!
Follow your heart
You know this by experience: what do people tell you when you are getting stressed out? “Take a few deep breaths, count to ten, relax.” When you are excited or under a lot of stress, you know that you probably don’t make the best decisions. Now we know why. Signals from your heart are turning off a portion of your rationality. Why? Apparently the heart is signaling trouble or need, and the brain devotes more resources in response. It has dual use circuits ready to do this.
Through the vagus nerve, your heart signals the medusa, hypothalamus, thalamus, amygdala, and the cerebral cortex. Your heart is actually sending more signals to your brain than your brain is sending to your heart. The heart and brain are linked, and heart trouble can also translate to brain trouble. Heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, and heart surgeries are now being linked to cognitive decline. In a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA), researchers at the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Würzburg, Germany conducted a study of 6455 women aged 65 to 79 years who, at the start of the study were cognitively intact, and were tested an average of 8.4 years later for cognitive impairment. Women with cardiovascular disease, particularly vascular disease, atrial fibrillation, and heart failure had significantly greater incidences of cognitive decline than those without cardiovascular disease.
The heart has its own nervous system, called the intracardiac nervous system (ICNS). Its extensive system of neurons resides on the surface of the heart, and abnormal ICNS function is linked to atrial fibrillation and heart failure. And now we know that leads to cognitive decline as well.
Get with the beat
When medically evaluating heart function, the electrical signals of the heart are received from sensors on the skin to measure those signals — they are strong enough to be received on the skin. The first step in a heartbeat is depolarization: working outward from the sinoatrial node, which is the heart’s pacemaker, a wave of depolarization spreads to the atrioventricular node and then is distributed to the ventricular walls, initiating the ventricular contraction. This universal depolarization process causes the cells of the heart to synchronize their contraction — failure to synchronize means an ineffective pumping action, rendering the heartbeat weak or even useless.
The heartbeat is sometimes measured by the R-R interval (RR), which is the length of time from one beat to the next. A slower heart rate (HR) results in a longer time between beats so the R-R interval measurement gives a higher number. The R-R interval should be high for a resting heart, and low during activity. The more the HR or RR responds to the body’s current needs, the better the nervous system is working. This is one reason some heart monitoring takes into account resting and active states.
What heart monitors do is sense the electrical system, which is the nervous system, of the heart. Each beat requires that a number of signals occur which instruments can detect, and these signals repeat for each beat in a predictable pattern. The heart’s very active nervous system tells us much about the health of the heart itself, but it also says a lot about the health of the whole body.
Distributed “brains”
Your body is a coordinated set of activities by intelligent organs which talk to each other. The heart and brain are just two examples. Through the body’s nervous system, the brain has two-way communication with your organs. While much intelligence is in the brain, organs have their own special intelligence. Consider an orchestra: all the instrument players are certainly intelligent, but they follow the directions of the conductor. If a player is having trouble, the conductor steps in, but lets the player handle the basics of playing the instrument. The body is even more integrated than an orchestra, because feedback from organs can affect brain behavior.
The brain is a multi-use device. Circuits can be re-purposed or rerouted as needed. Heart rate can change the mode of certain brain circuits. This is where integrative, holistic medicine is sometimes the only effective medicine, because it recognizes the orchestra and not just the individual players. Would your doctor think to look to your heart if you have cognitive decline, or consider heart rate patterns when looking at poor decision-making?
Perhaps it seems too simple to say that a whole-body solution is necessary to good health. But time and time again we are finding examples of interaction between the organs, mind, and immune system. Because parts of your body have multiple functions, and all are talking to each other, all of the body should be considered to treat disease and seek good health. That even includes good, rational brain function!
Dr. Nemec’s Review
There are three main players in your health and your healing. They are your mind, your heart and your brain. The heart speaks to the brain as this research has shown. Also the mind speaks to the brain with its information. So who speaks louder? In most people the mind has written programs, both subconsciously and consciously, on the hard drive of the brain and the brain signals function in the cells of the organs, glands and tissues because of these programs. But there is another pathway that is very important and very powerful. This is the heart signaling. How does the heart talk to the brain? Through the intracardiac nervous system (ICNS) and the vagus nerve. What stimulates the heart to speak to the brain and override the mind? Strong emotion. Love, joy, peace, and contentment are some of the initiators of the heart that override the mind. When we treat patients at Total Health Institute we are testing their brain waves, their heart waves, and how these are affecting their cells all the way down to the individual cells of each organ, gland and tissue. You must take all this into account when treating the whole person because cancer does not come from diet alone, nor stress alone, nor toxicity, deficiency or genetic predisposition. It comes from a combination of all these factors and all these have to be analyzed and corrected for the person to heal and thrive. Otherwise you are just seeking a patch, not a complete healing. Most treatments seek to get the tumors or conditions to resolve without addressing all the factors and that is why the tumors come back, the conditions return. If you want to heal and be at the highest level of health you must address the mind, heart, brain and every organ and tissue in the body — not just the apparent sick ones.
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.
