Social media is like cancer — no, not because it has taken over people’s attention or that it has some evil aspect, but in the way it has been built. You may have a negative or positive opinion about FaceBook/Meta or Twitter, but the way that it came about is similar to cancer. Here are the similarities:
- Social media used existing communication network components to build upon.
- Social media rejected some of the usual communication techniques.
- Social media built its own unique and separate new structure on top of the existing components it did not reject.
- Social media grew independently of the rest of the network growth.
Social media has become essentially its own organism. While it isn’t telephone, television, or a set of websites, it is built using the Internet, without which it cannot function. While it is a part of the Internet, it acts quite differently from other systems there.
We could even say that efforts by those who dislike social media to control it or turn supports away from it have failed. You can dislike social media, but people still use it and its support grows. It just comes back stronger. You can try to regulate it by laws, but even in countries that ban certain social media, it still finds back-door ways in. It has firmly taken root in our modern world.
Conventional medicine is starting to agree with natural medicine about cancer…
…but hasn’t fully realized it yet. The standard cancer fighting techniques of chemotherapy and radiation are being reconsidered in light of immunotherapy and gene expression blocking therapies. Medical science has realized that poisoning the body along with cancer and radiating the cancer along with healthy tissue does great damage to the body. Scientists recognize that the machinery of cancer development is very intricate, and the shotgun approach of killing everything and hoping the cancer dies first is a primitive way of looking at cancer. What they are missing, for the most part, is what premise they are building upon: that they can tinker with the genetic machinery without doing great harm to the body in the process. The body itself is better equipped to adjust that machinery. Still, they are getting closer to the reasons cancers exist and are attempting to avoid the toxins and radiation in favor of better solutions.
We all profit from the research. Natural medicine can take the same data and build from the premise that the body can be steered to change genetic expression and fire up the immune system to kill cancer cells. It is only prudent to use modern testing, including genetic testing, to see where our efforts need to be directed. We knew that diet, exercise, and other environmental factors somehow could shut down cancer — it has observably happened — yet studies into epigenetics, the process where genetic expression occurs without changing the genes themselves, tells us how and why this is possible.
Epigenetics gives cells the ability to pick and choose from their vast library of stored genetics to find the best instructions for them to cope with their current environment. Some instructions are bad, some are damaged, but the cells don’t have to use those if they are not furthering their collective goal of living and thriving. Not that long ago, most cancer research didn’t mention epigenetics, and now the term is showing up frequently. Some research even admits that chemotherapy toxins cause the cells to epigenetically choose instructions that further the cancer development.
The new cancer network
Unlike other diseases, cancer seeks to rebuild the entire organism. Not only are the cells choosing some genetic codes that divorce them from the rest of the body, but they are looking to build their own body. Cells are meant to work together: they send and receive signals to each other for mutual cooperation. Making a healthy body requires a vast network of signals to coordinate cellular activities. But cancer cells develop the collective goal of building a tumor or collective body of their own. That tumor’s goals are much simpler than those of the healthy body — it just wants to live and grow as fast as possible.
The normal body’s growth and development starts with stem cells, which change with progressive generations into more specialized cells. This happens very rapidly at first, with cell growth rates rivaling the rate that cancer can grow, but as the body develops that rate slows. The mature body does only enough stem cell differentiation to maintain itself. At that point, it has also built a massive communication network set up to coordinate the cells of the body.
Cancer find some of that network useful, but instructions to cooperate with the body, particularly if that means some of the cancer cells must die, are now rejected. The cancer cell’s epigenetics now see those instructions as a threat to its existence and refuses to cooperate. Yet, even though a tumor is a lot less complex than a body, there is some body cooperation needed to support a tumor community, and some cell differentiation needed so cells can perform different functions within that community. That means a new signaling network is needed. In a study published in iScience, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, Georgia outlined the development of the new cancer network. First, they observed that the cancer de-differentiated (went back towards being unspecialized stem cells), and with that a corresponding reduction in communication network complexity. Then they saw that, as the cancer matured, it re-established a more complex new network which was quite different than the pre-cancer network. The cancer cells were building the network that they wanted!
Sound familiar? Social media did the same as it first went back to basics and then built a new network, with new rules to further social media’s needs, on top of the primary telecommunications network. The needs of their community were different, as those of the cancer community differ. Not only are cancer cells using some different genetic codes for their operation, but they are also working with a somewhat different communication network for their co-operation.
Researchers from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington and the Department of Biotechnology and Molecular Science at the University of Insubria in Varese, Italy, published in Scientific Reports, studied data from available cancer transcriptome (which means the total of all messenger RNA molecules expressed for an organism) databases for 2,558 ligand-receptor pairs from ten different tumors and compared with transcriptome data from normal tissues. What they found was the network of cell to cell communication was changed both in levels of certain signals and types of signals. Expression of some genes was enhanced, some expression was reduced, and the reception was also enhanced or reduced for various signals. They were studying isogenic cancer cells, meaning that the cells had essentially the same genes. The differentiation that they observed and the subsequent cell cooperation within the tumor was all from cells that were genetically the same, leaving the epigenetics and cell signaling as the remaining reasons for the tumor organization.
This should not surprise us. In a family, perhaps neither spouse is particularly good at bookkeeping, yet someone has to do it. Sometimes it is shared, but more often one steps into the role for the family. Or one receives a job offer which shapes his or her skills in a certain direction, but the other spouse could have done the job equally well had the opportunity arisen. Environment shapes any group of individuals, and the same is true for the cells in your body. Environment demands diversity, cooperation, and communication of the group.
Networking is the new epi-layer
“Epi” means “on top of”. Epigenetics means genetic expression on top of the genes themselves. And networking is another layer on top of that: genetic expression is shaped by cellular signaling through that network. Signaling then feeds back to epigenetics, because the cellular expression changes as the signals direct it, which then impacts the signals sent out due to the new genetic expression. Genetics provides the instruction resource library. Mutations and genes from foreign invaders just add to that library, further increasing its diversity.
If we compare life to layers of an onion, we realize that there are many layers to life that we can peel away, only to find more. At the core is an intelligence-based design that works against the natural tendency to tear everything down and reduce it to chaos. That design process is constantly building from the rubble around it. It looks at the environment around it and takes steps towards life and prosperity. But the environment is harsh, and the pull towards chaos is strong, so the decisions that cells make are not always the best. Cancer is a very bad decision, but to the cell, it seems good at the time. Our challenge is to present the cells with the best environment so that they are least likely to make bad choices. We change our cellular environment through our lifestyle choices.
Now, can we do the same with social media?
Dr. Nemec’s Review
What is social media? A different type of communication within a communication network. What is cancer? The communication of survival of an individual cell regardless of the whole. Epigenetics in the short version is your cells using any information from past or present to make the best choice in that moment for the cell. It is like you are in a crisis situation and you only have so many options available to you in that moment. So you pick which one you think is best and go for it. Does that mean you always make the best choice? No, but that is what you chose at that point. Maybe at another point in time and circumstances you might chose differently. Your cells are no different than you are. They make choices that could turn out very well or turn out not so well. But remember the most important choice any cell of yours will make is to stay alive no matter what the cost. This is where one develops cancer stem cells. In the Georgia Tech study what they observed is cancer cells de-differentiating back into stem cells (we call this type of stem cell a cancer stem cell) which then can differentiate into a different type of cell or tissue to rise to the occasion of the environmental messages. So the cell goes back in time to start over (back to the drawing board) to make a better cell for the present surroundings. Next, in the Scientific Reports study the researcher found that even though cells were identically the same from a genetic point of view, each cell expressed certain genes and signaling molecules more and other ones less. This means that these cells where actually talking to the rest of the cells by changing the signals that they were communicating with.
What does all this mean to you? It means that your genes do not matter as much, but what does matter is the environment you put those genes into. So if we do our nutritional genetic testing on you and find you have a certain tumor suppressor gene expressing slower than average communication then you would be more likely to develop cancer because of the lack of quick enough communication. Now instead of trying to make a medication to give temporary signal improvement but without adapting to the environment, what if we found out that this tumor suppressor gene used allicin as a cofactor to speed up its communication, and allicin is found in high quantities in garlic. Then just by eating the food your genes wanted all along you would have been speeding up communication without any side effect or wrong secondary communications. We cannot mimic with medication communication to control cell function because the cell is constantly in communication with all the other cells adapting to each moment in time. The message that is good for this moment is not necessarily good for the next moment.
If you want to improve your health, you must begin by getting back to basics — we call them the 7 Basic Steps to Total Health. Remember garlic has properties that give the information to the cell and have no negative side effects. Think of your whole health like that. Will this help me long term, or will it just help short term and hurt me long term?
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.
