Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure in 8 weeks (1/25/2011)

Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure in 8 weeks (1/25/2011)

Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. In a study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain's grey matter.

"Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day," says Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study's senior author. "This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing."

Previous studies from Lazar's group and others found structural differences between the brains of experienced mediation practitioners and individuals with no history of meditation, observing thickening of the cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration. But those investigations could not document that those differences were actually produced by meditation.

For the current study, MR images were take of the brain structure of 16 study participants two weeks before and after they took part in the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program at the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness. In addition to weekly meetings that included practice of mindfulness meditation - which focuses on nonjudgmental awareness of sensations, feelings and state of mind - participants received audio recordings for guided meditation practice and were asked to keep track of how much time they practiced each day. A set of MR brain images were also taken of a control group of non-meditators over a similar time interval.

Meditation group participants reported spending an average of 27 minutes each day practicing mindfulness exercises, and their responses to a mindfulness questionnaire indicated significant improvements compared with pre-participation responses. The analysis of MR images, which focused on areas where meditation-associated differences were seen in earlier studies, found increased grey-matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion and introspection. Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated with decreased grey-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. Although no change was seen in a self-awareness-associated structure called the insula, which had been identified in earlier studies, the authors suggest that longer-term meditation practice might be needed to produce changes in that area. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.

"It is fascinating to see the brain's plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life." says Britta Hölzel, PhD, first author of the paper and a research fellow at MGH and Giessen University in Germany. "Other studies in different patient populations have shown that meditation can make significant improvements in a variety of symptoms, and we are now investigating the underlying mechanisms in the brain that facilitate this change."

Amishi Jha, PhD, a University of Miami neuroscientist who investigates mindfulness-training's effects on individuals in high-stress situations, says, "These results shed light on the mechanisms of action of mindfulness-based training. They demonstrate that the first-person experience of stress can not only be reduced with an 8-week mindfulness training program but that this experiential change corresponds with structural changes in the amydala, a finding that opens doors to many possibilities for further research on MBSR's potential to protect against stress-related disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder." Jha was not one of the study investigators.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the Massachusetts General Hospital

Research shows emotional stress can change brain function (1/19/2011) 

We know that chronic stress negatively affects brain function in many ways... here we have a study  showing acute stress does the same. However with the new mental and emotional protocols from CLRT, there is now a way to immediately reduce the effects of stress on the brain with laser accuracy. Come learn how to do it in Charlotte, Chicago or San Diego this spring! 

Research conducted by Iaroslav Savtchouk, a graduate student, and S. June Liu, PhD, Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, has shown that a single exposure to acute stress affected information processing in the cerebellum - the area of the brain responsible for motor control and movement coordination and also involved in learning and memory formation. The work is published in the January 12, 2011 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The researchers found that a five-minute exposure to the odor of a predator produced the insertion of receptors containing GluR2 at the connections (synapses) between nerve cells in the brain. GluR2 is a subunit of a receptor in the central nervous system that regulates the transfer of electrical impulses between nerve cells, or neurons. The presence of GluR2 changed electrical currents in the cerebellum in a way that increased activity and altered the output of the cerebellar circuit in the brains of mice.

Read more on www.brainmysteries.com...


Register for a Spring CLRT seminar here.

CLRT 15: Physical Pain and Emotional Stress from Dr. Nick Wise on Vimeo.

Clip from the Intro to the 12 Hour Seminar on Cranial Laser Reflex Technique from London, England

The Inner Life of the Cell « XVIVO

The Inner Life of the Cell « XVIVO

Low level laser therapy for traumatic brain injury

Proc. SPIE 7552, 755206 (2010)

http://link.aip.org/link/?PSISDG/7552/755206/1

Crash Course in CLRT

Time: Yesterday, Mid afternoon

Scene: “The Lab”/ Wise Chiropractic and Wellness

Patient: “Bob”, retired white male, early seventies

Chief Complaints: Ten years of terrible balance and no equilibrium, leaning forward all the time, some lower back and leg pain (mild), constant numbness and burning in his feet...and oh yeah: whenever he walks more than 5 feet, he cannot stop.

Sounds like the beginning to a bad joke, right?

A guy walks into a chiropractor’s office and crashes headfirst into the wall.

The Doctor says...

(I haven’t thought of a good punchline yet.)

That’s right, Bob can start walking just fine, but once he’s rolling, he can’t slow down or stop without crashing into walls or furniture. Inconvenient, to say the least. He certainly won’t be touring any china shops anytime soon.

This condition had started over ten years ago, but had been getting seriously worse over the last two years. Bob tended to downplay his own problems-- he was mostly just upset he couldn’t play golf for the last decade, but the looks on the faces of his wife and daughter clearly indicated a high level of frustration, exasperation, even desperation... in other words, this situation was drastically decreasing the quality of ALL of their lives.

Bob seemed lucid enough in conversation, but his wife told me he was having trouble remembering things. When I saw his forward-slumped standing posture, I immediately thought of Parkinson’s, but those patients have more trouble initiating action, not ceasing it. He needed a walker, but refused one, so he carried a cane as a compromise with his wife. Unfortunately, the cane did nothing to slow him down, keep him up, or keep him from lunging forward, so he still pitched into things regularly.

Previous diagnoses and medical treatments had focused on spinal stenosis, peripheral neuropathy, MS, high cholesterol, herpes-type viral infections...you name the specialist, they said, and they’ve been to see ‘em. You name the test, and Bob’s had it. You name the drug, and he’s been on it. He had also been under chiropractic care, lots of massage therapy, and he “even tried acupuncture” a few times. However, nothing in a decade had done ANYTHING to slow him-- or his condition-- down.

Current medications listed were a statin(!) for high cholesterol, Lyrica for peripheral neuropathy, and a beta blocker for high blood pressure. I asked him how long he had been on a cholesterol drug, he said “Oh, about 30 years.”

I did a spit-take. “Say what!? Which ones?”

“Mostly Lipitor for 15 years, then switched to Zocor, then Vytorin and Crestor...”

This was red flag numero uno.

Statins, especially the last two he mentioned, are notorious for causing peripheral neuropathy, and the longer you are on them, the more likely these “side-effects” will show up. Three decades of statin use, with progressively stronger drugs, can cause a lot of serious neurological problems if unchecked. A plan of action was formulating in my mind, as we typically do really well with peripheral neuropathy cases. Get him on some CoQ10 stat, lots of essential fatty acids, give him some chiropractic adjustments and CLRT treatments... he should respond fairly well.

However the real bomb dropped a few minutes later, when his wife casually mentions his... wait for it... pernicious anemia of 50 years! At this point, chocolate milk flew out of my nose! (Or would have, had I been drinking it. Keep in mind, this is 24 minutes into the case history before they let me in on that slightly significant tidbit.)

“Oh, but it’s been under control,” his wife continued. “He takes a B12 shot every two weeks, and his hemoglobin is fine.” Obviously the anemia part had been more or less under control, but the B12 in the shot was not getting to his nervous system for some reason. When I looked it up to refresh my memory, I saw that almost ALL of his neurological symptoms could be caused by advanced B12 deficiency! I looked over all the MRIs (lumbar, cervical, brain) and they were all clear. Nothing of any medical interest at all, and his chiropractic findings were merely a hypo-lordotic neck curve and some serious forward head carriage. All of the sudden this was a lot more complicated.

I recommended a conservative trial of chiropractic and cranial laser treatments, and before I treated him, I asked him to walk up and down the waiting room to see him in action. Sure enough, with his head down he gained speed from one end to the other, and then he went through the open door into my adjusting room, and a second later we heard the muffled bang of his lower body hitting my adjusting table.

His wife said, “See?”

Yep. I saw.

With him supine on the table, I examined the active and passive ROM of all his lower extremity joints. His ankles were especially rigid with very little motion in any direction. I adjusted his ankles, knees and hips with the Impulse adjusting instrument, which taps at 6 Hz, and is an excellent way to stimulate joint proprioceptors. Then I adjusted his atlas as a “double anterior” listing, tapping from A-P on both TP’s.

Next I used my 200mW red laser and bathed his cranium/cortex in light. The points that I chose first were the cranial reflex pathways for the calves, ankles and hips, and C1. After that I lasered the “executive decision” areas of the prefrontal cortex, the medial PFC( mPFC), and the major chronic stress area for men, the right orbital PFC (rOPFC). Total laser time was about a minute and a half.

Like Dr. Frankenstein raising his unholy creation for the first time, I slowly brought the table to upright and had Bob stand up. First thing that was evident was his posture: instead of stooping over like Nixon looking for seashells on the beach, he was fully upright with his head and shoulders pulled back.

His wife was the first to comment. “Oh my GAWD, Bob! You’re standing up straight!”

Bob shrugged. “Yeah I guess so.” He shrugged his shoulders a bit. He was mildly impressed.

Take a walk, I said. And he did exactly that: he casually strolled across the room, chatting to us about something (I don’t recall what as he was headed towards a glass table with a lamp on it), but as he got near it, he stopped on a dime, pirouetted, and turned around. He sauntered back toward us, turned around again, a did another lap, still chatting.

His wife’s jaw was hanging wide open. “You STOPPED!”

Bob shrugged again as if to say “Yeah, what’s the big deal?”

“Oh my GAWD daddy, you STOPPED!” His daughter was also impressed.

He made a few more successful laps back and forth.

I gave them my nutritional recommendations, and after that he made it to the bathroom without crashing, the front desk without leaning on it, and to his car without any help whatsoever.

I scheduled him for two days later to check on him, and when he came back in, he said that he had walked around the entire Publix supermarket “like a normal person” the day before for the first time in 3 years. No motorized scooter was needed this time.

This impressed him.

As I have only seen him twice so far, I don’t know if he will completely recover... but I can tell you one thing, it’s a helluva start. The initial results with Cranial Laser Reflex Technique, chiropractic, and basic nutrition are extremely promising.

Oh yeah. I thought of the rest of the joke.

A guy walks into a multidisciplinary doctor’s clinic and crashes headfirst into the wall.

The MD says ”Looks like you need a little pick-me-up. Here’s an antidepressant.”

The PT says “Your problem is weak abs. Lets strengthen your core.”

The straight DC says, “Yep. Definitely an atlas subluxation.”

The acupuncturist says, “The dampness in your spleen has stagnated your chi.”

The CLRT practitioner says “Your holographic biophoton field is hemorrhaging light! Get me a laser, stat!”

The front desk girl points to the small piece of plastic connecting his shoes and says, “I think he needs to quit stealing shoes from K-Mart.”

Ok, I’ll keep working on that one.

The video following this post is from Bob's second visit, where he demonstrates his rediscovered ability to stop and turn.

‘Til next time from the Lab,

Dr. Nick

PS: We are holding 2 “Crash Courses” in CLRT in the UK this June! Come learn this amazing technique that takes the hard work out of great results.

Visit www.lightforhealth.co.uk/education for more information.

CLRT FAQ

Hi Dr Wise,
I am wondering how long your results typically last with the Cranial Laser Reflex Technique? Do people tend to still need a few treatments per week in the beginning or do they heal faster? I saw you treat that lady with bilateral shoulder restriction and I wanted to know how long she kept the increased range of motion and how many times you needed to treat her.
Thanks for your time.
Dr. M

Hi Doc

Good question.

The results you'll get will vary in the length of time they last... just like with an adjustment or any other treatment. However in performing CLRT and correcting the information stored at the cranial reflex, you are greatly enhancing the healing process by working on a major contributor to someone's chronic problem. And that contributor is there in every case, whether you realize it or not.

It depends mostly on the nature of the problem, the length of chronicity, and the stresses they are under... if a person's pain is due to repetitive stress and they go and do the same thing again and again, of course the immediate results you get won't last very long. But repeat treatments and lifestyle/ergonomics education will help.

Every case will vary to some degree... sometimes you'll just get temporary relief with CLRT (couple of days), but sometimes you can actually "FIX" the person in one try (as much as someone can truly be "fixed," right?) It just depends.

When first starting off, put someone on a regular treatment schedule just like you normally would, and do CLRT along with your adjustments... I usually start at 2x week for moderate cases. As things start to hold longer, we reduce the frequency of visits and teach them where to stimulate on their own head with "acupencture." (You'll see...) This will provide them with relief at home and reduce the need for meds.

The lady in the video with the shoulder problem? Well, She is "fixed," as far as that problem goes: no pain and good ROM to this day. However, she has a very high stress job (oncology nurse), and her shoulders are her weak spot, so she comes in once a month for maintenance so they don't regress.

Take care,

Dr. Nick

Good Story from CLRT Practitioner

Here's an email I received recently from Dr. Norman Price in California. He's a DC who specializes in BioCranial work, and has enjoyed CLRT immensely. His story highlights the effectiveness of the repetitive percussion with a ballpoint pen... and the importance of improvisation.

Hi Nick,
I thought you would appreciate hearing about a patient that I worked with last week while visiting my kids in Portland, OR.

I have an acupuncturist friend who allows me to see pts. in her office while visiting and also asks me to work on pts. of hers. I was telling her about the CLRT work and she asked me to work on a new pt. who had a pretty bad car accident that spun her around pretty violently. Ordinarily, I would do my Bio Cranial work first, but that didn't happen this time. My friend was more interested in seeing if the CLRT would be helpful. Only challenge was that I forgot to bring my laser with me, so I grabbed the nearest ball pt. pen.

On the previous visit, just touching the area of the spine around T5-T7 set off a rather strong vertigo response, so that she couldn't even walk. So, I decided to muscle test the area and found profound weakness on the right around T6/T7. (I chose the right side to test first because of her skin coloration and facial presentation.) I did several taps on the area and re-tested with good results. She started to feel some vertigo and had to lie down. That's when I left her in the capable hands of my acupuncturist friend who later wrote me the following:

Wow! She did great. I did some ear points only and let her cook for 15 minutes. She said in the middle of the treatment her whole face felt like a warmth passed over it. Remember how pasty she was coming in? Was radiant going out. Felt the best she had in a week. No vertigo/nausea. Woo Hoo. Thanks for the help. Please send info on your new technique.

I sent her links to your website so she can check it out.

Hope all is well,
Norm

Dr. Norman Price
Bio Cranial Practitioner
Senior Bio Cranial Instructor

When memory-related neurons fire in sync with certain brain waves, memories last

When memory-related neurons fire in sync with certain brain waves, memories last

When memory-related neurons in the brain fire in sync with certain theta (3-8 Hz) brain waves, the resulting image recognition and memories are stronger than if this synchronization does not occur.

"Theta oscillations are known to be involved in memory formation, and previous studies have identified correlations between memory strength and the activity of certain neurons, but the relationships between these events have not been understood. Our research shows that when memory-related neurons are well coordinated to theta waves during the learning process, memories are stronger," said Adam N. Mamelak, M.D., a neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

War on Drugs? Meet the War on Cheesecake.

Dopamine D2 receptors in addiction-like reward dysfunction and compulsive eating in obese rats

• Paul M Johnson

• & Paul J Kenny.

  Nature Neuroscience

  (2010)

  doi:10.1038/nn.2519

Abstract

We found that development of obesity was coupled with emergence of a progressively worsening deficit in neural reward responses. Similar changes in reward homeostasis induced by cocaine or heroin are considered to be crucial in triggering the transition from casual to compulsive drug-taking. Accordingly, we detected compulsive-like feeding behavior in obese but not lean rats, measured as palatable food consumption that was resistant to disruption by an aversive conditioned stimulus. Striatal dopamine D2 receptors (D2Rs) were downregulated in obese rats, as has been reported in humans addicted to drugs. Moreover, lentivirus-mediated knockdown of striatal D2Rs rapidly accelerated the development of addiction-like reward deficits and the onset of compulsive-like food seeking in rats with extended access to palatable high-fat food. These data demonstrate that overconsumption of palatable food triggers addiction-like neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuits and drives the development of compulsive eating. Common hedonic mechanisms may therefore underlie obesity and drug addiction.

Silencing the brain with light

Silencing the brain with light

A team led by neuroengineer Edward Boyden has found a class of proteins that, when inserted into neurons, allow them to be turned off with rays of yellow-green light. The silencing is near instantaneous and easily reversible.

This kind of selective brain silencing, reported in the Jan. 7 issue of Nature, could not only help treat brain disorders but also allows researchers to investigate the role of different types of neurons in normal brain circuits and how those circuits can go wrong.

“We hope to enable a broad platform of molecular tools for controlling brain activity, thus enabling new general therapeutic tools, and new ways of studying brain function,” says Boyden, the Benesse Career Development Professor in the MIT Media Lab and an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.

‘Clean and digital’

Boyden first demonstrated the use of light to reduce brain activity in 2007. However, the feat was performed in cells, not living animals, and the silencing was not as precise. In the new study, the researchers used a different protein — one that inhibits neurons more strongly, silences more brain tissue and can be repeatedly activated because it returns to its original state within milliseconds of light activation.

With the new protein, called Arch, brain silencing is “extremely clean and digital,” says Boyden. “The other one was more like a volume knob turning up and down.”

Boyden and his colleagues combined genetic and optical techniques to control neuron activity, a strategy that has come to be called “optogenetic.” First, they engineered brain cells of living mice to express the gene for the Arch protein, which functions as a proton pump, moving protons across the cell membrane to alter the cell’s voltage. The proton pumps are light-sensitive, so they pump protons out of cells when activated by yellow-green light. That lowers voltage inside the cells, silencing their firing.

In their previous work, the researchers used a light-sensitive chloride pump called halorhodopsin, which changes neurons’ voltage by pumping chloride ions into the cell. However, they weren’t satisfied with it and started looking for a better chloride pump, examining proteins from a range of bacteria, plants and fungi. They couldn’t find a chloride pump that offered the kind of control they were seeking, but discovered the new Arch proton pump in a strain of archaebacteria called Halorubrum sodomense that lives in the Dead Sea.

“This is the result of mining the wealth of the natural world — genomic diversity and ecological variation — to discover new tools that can empower scientists to study complex systems like the brain,” says Boyden. “We're using natural tools isolated from the wild to help us understand how neural circuits work.” This strategy has long been used in molecular and cellular biology, resulting in tools like restriction enzymes, PCR and GFP, but Boyden's work only recently has been applied to tackle complex systems-level biological problems.

One major advantage of the new pumps is that they can be used over and over again: They recover their ability to be light-activated within seconds, rather than the minutes required for the old tool, halorhodopsin, to reprime itself. That is critical to neuroscientists who want to study the role of particular cell types in different tasks, says Edward Callaway, professor of systems neurobiology at the Salk Institute, who was not involved in the research.

“If you have to wait a long time to get recovery, you just can’t compare different conditions quickly,” says Callaway, who studies vision-processing circuits in the brain. The new channels offer a “much more practical” way to use optogenetics for animal studies such as testing which neurons are involved in different visual tasks, he says.

To achieve brain silencing in mice, the researchers implanted an externally controllable light source inside the mice’s brains. While the current device requires mice to be wired up to an external control, the researchers are designing a fully wireless system.

Boyden's group, working with the Desimone lab at the McGovern Institute at MIT, is now performing pre-clinical testing of this approach in non-human primates, to assess its safety as a potential therapy for epilepsy, chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder. The team has also developed, in collaboration with other groups at MIT, hardware for optical neural stimulation, which could be valuable for neural prosthetic purposes.

The MIT researchers have also discovered other proton pumps activated by different colors of light, combining these pumps with previously discovered tools allows researchers to selectively silence different brain regions using red and blue light. “One beautiful thing about this is we can inactivate different projections in the same brain,” says Boyden.

In future studies, the researchers plan to use their neuron-silencing tools to examine the neural circuits of cognition and emotion, and to determine whether the new pumps are safe and effective in monkeys — a critical step toward potentially using optical control to treat human diseases.

MIT TechTV – Ed Boyden: National Science Foundation interview

MIT TechTV – Ed Boyden: National Science Foundation interview

Posted using ShareThis

Hot Stuff! Brand New Cranial Laser Reflex Technique Case Study Video!

Here is a new video of a patient that came in yesterday for the first time. She was referred by another chiropractor in town who sent her for evaluation and a Cranial Laser Reflex Technique treatment for spasms after a stroke 2.5 years ago. She has also been under the care of several MD's, PT's, neurologists, etc during this time. (Luckily she was very agreeable to me videoing the session, and luckily I had an extern handy to hold my iPhone.)

The total visit lasted about 25 minutes, but the video is edited to 10 minutes long as per the youtube limits. Most of what I cut was me talking, and repeating some of the same treatments again.

I start off with lasering the Cranial Reflex Pathways for the biceps and forearm muscles with a 200mW 650nm red laser (on half battery power, probably). This immediately reduced the tone of these muscles that had been in spasm for 2.5 years. I then perform some general cranial adjustments, both with my hands and with light taps from the Impulse adjusting instrument. I then release the traps, pecs, and rhomboids, etc with more CLRT.

Then I bust out the Resonant Frequency Wand and run the normalizing frequencies for biceps, forearm flexors, etc. The change was immediately apparent. The biceps frequency elongated that muscle and allowed me to straighten her arm, and the freq for pronator teres was especially helpful at untwisting her foream and wrist. After a few minutes of this, I was able to fully extend her arm, waaay farther than it had been for years. She reported that she felt a tingling in her arm as I was working on her head, and that the treatment felt "awesome."

The difficulty with a case like this lies in the fact that she has been stuck in rigid flexion so long and these muscles have shortened considerably, and she will have to un-learn all the coping strategies she has had to create along the way. But overall, her response after a single treatment makes me think she'll do very well if we keep this up.

There's no limit to the capacity of the human body to heal itself... if one is open to the possibilities.

Pretty cool stuff...Watch.

Brain Stuff

I've been looking at loads of Xrays and MRI's since I've been here in India, and yesterday I saw an interesting case... actually, I saw about 10 cases yesterday that would qualify as highly unusual, but this one stood out.

I first met Mr. Shah in 2005 on my first trip to India. He is the best friend of my partner here, so I have spent a lot of time with him in my 3 trips here. Shahbhai (Shah-bay), as they call him, is the quintessential businessman: a bonafide real estate mogul, builder of highrises, and owner of 3 factories which employ over 3000 people. His cel phone never stops ringing and it is hardly away from his right ear for more than 2 minutes at a time. He is the most serious, business minded, and some might say...humorless... people I have ever met. I called him Spockbhai once... joke didn't translate too well. Swell guy though.

Shahbhai had a stroke 2 years ago from a big clot that got stuck in a cerebral artery on the right side, and this was clearly visible on the MRI of his brain that he got right afterwards. The left-sided paralysis he had is gone, and he has improved very much with chiropractic care. Before I adjusted him this time, I sent him for a follow-up MRI of the brain (costs about 42 USD!) to see if the clot was still there. Thankfully the new films showed it was totally gone, but with some scar tissue left.

But what struck me was this... his left hemisphere was at least 20% larger than his right.

I checked all the films, old and new, and it was like this on all of them, so it wasn't atrophy from after the stroke. On the radiologist's report, they called it age-related atrophy... he's 60... but it was clearly not from a normal aging process...

These are the questions I had...

The left brain typically controls logical, linear thinking while the right brain handles creative expression. Knowing Spockbhai's tendencies for 100% focus on business and finances, I wondered if this was from decades of exercising the left hemisphere and neglect of the emotional side?

Or the other chilling thought was that it was from the constant celphone use? ( I asked, and healways holds it to his right ear. ) If anyone could cook his cortex with a celphone, he'd be a top contender for sure. He'll take a business call even while his guru/living god is talking. For real.

I know this is pure speculation here, but this is what I wrote down on a prescription pad for him before he left.

"Drink lots more panni (water.)

More art, music, dancing and poetry.

Less celphone.

Live long and prosper."

Can't hurt...

Somewhere Bruce Lipton is laughing...and/or crying

Or maybe a combination of hysterical laughing/crying...

Here is an article, released today, that essentially says what cellular biologist Bruce Lipton has been saying for years: our genes are not the primary controllers of our destiny, but are themselves controlled by signals from the environment: i.e. what we eat, what we think, how we move, etc... But OF COURSE they HAVE to mention the great new drug therapies they can come up with to exploit this research, blah blah blah. Yes, it makes perfect sense in one sentence to say that our genes are controlled by "what we eat or how active we are", and in the next sentence to say that this can possibly be the basis for a revolutionary new drug treatment...

Dynamic Changes In DNA Linked To Human Diabetes

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090901122627.htm

ScienceDaily (2009-09-02) -- New research may give new meaning to the adage "You are what you eat." The DNA isolated from the muscles of people with diabetes bears chemical marks not found in those who respond normally to rising blood sugar levels, according to the study. The epigenetic marks in question are specifically found on a gene that controls the amount of fuel, in the form of glucose or lipids, that cells burn.

Select quotes from article (italics added):

--"Those changes rapidly reprogram the gene's activity without altering the underlying DNA sequence at all. They suggest a way that environmental factors—what we eat or how active we are—may perhaps influence our genes, for better or for worse."

{Wow! What does this mean for the billions spent on the human genome project?}

--"It's a much more dynamic process than we thought," Zierath said. "The genetic causes of diabetes are important, but this shows us that epigenetic changes, which take place on top of our genes, can alter our physiology in critical ways."

{Yay! Keep going!}

----"The researchers say they don't yet know whether these epigenetic changes are reversible, but they do have evidence that they might be prevented."

{Prevention? Really?}

--"In a broader sense, the discovery shows that we are not "victims of our genes," she adds. "It's exciting because there may be ways for us to lower disease risk if physical activity or other lifestyle factors can positively influence our epigenome and improve metabolism."

{ How brave to admit this in public! Tell us more!}

--"There's room for this in terms of drug discovery," Zierath said.

{Doh!}

Um... why not focus on changing the "signals from the environment?"

Just a thought...

CLRT explained by Vibrational Biophysics Lecture

This slideshow from Michael Soloman Morgan does a great job of laying the

groundwork for the fundamental scientific basis of CLRT.

Yes it is lengthy, but equal parts delicious and nutritious.

He brings together all of energy medicine's greatest hits:

biophotons, frequencies, the crystalline living matrix,

wave theory of information and biological laser theory. Dig it.

Vibrational Biophysics Iqqm Morgan

View more presentations from solarsonic.

New Biophoton Study in PLoS

Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rhythm

Department of Electronics and Intelligent Systems, Tohoku Institute of Technology, Sendai, Japan, 2 Department of Systems Biology, Kyoto University Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto, Japan, 3 Department of Brain Science, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan

Abstract

The human body literally glimmers. The intensity of the light emitted by the body is 1000 times lower than the sensitivity of our naked eyes. Ultraweak photon emission is known as the energy released as light through the changes in energy metabolism. We successfully imaged the diurnal change of this ultraweak photon emission with an improved highly sensitive imaging system using cryogenic charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. We found that the human body directly and rhythmically emits light. The diurnal changes in photon emission might be linked to changes in energy metabolism.

Interesting quotes from article:

• In all images, photon emission intensity from the face was higher than from the body. Moreover, photon emission intensity from the face was not homogeneous: the central area around the mouth and the cheeks was higher than the lateral area and the orbits. Furthermore, the photon emission intensity on the face and upper body appeared to display time-dependent changes. 
• Ultraweak biophoton emission was completely different from thermographic images showing surface temperature (Fig.1I). High photon emission were detected from the cheeks, followed by the upper neck and the forehead, while high temperature was detected in the supraclavicular lateral neck region, from which photon emission was low. 
• No significant correlation of daily photon intensity and temperature was found, and the dissimilarity between photon emission and thermal image suggest that the diurnal rhythm of photon emission is not a consequence of a change of temperature or microcirculation.

Link to full article: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0006256

CLRT reduces Sciatica by 90% in about 90 seconds!

This is a cool case I had a few months ago.

"J", a 36 year old African American male and former college basketball player, presented in my office with severe sciatica, rated 9/10, after an accident at work three nights before. He had been driving a front-end loader around the warehouse where he works, and ended up driving it into a 3 foot ditch because of poor visibility. Immediately after this sudden drop and jolt, he felt severe pain shooting from his low back all the way down his right leg to his big toe, and from that point on, he was unable to walk upright at all. He got no relief from sitting, lying down, OTC meds, or the Lortabs prescribed by the company medical doctor. He was set to see an orthopedist in three weeks (!) as the worker's comp process dictated, but "J" decided to come see me first as I had previously helped him get rid of his migraines.

Upon chiropractic, orthopedic and neurological examination, "J" had all the "usual" positive findings of sciatica-- twisted/posterior L5 on X-ray, extreme tenderness, edema and heat in lumbosacral junction, decreased sensation in calf area, positive straight leg raiser test, positive Braggard's, Valsalva's and Kemp's Tests, absent Achilles DTR, inability to squat and rise, etc-- all in all, it was certainly not looking good for his L5/S1 disc.

Now I am certainly not squeamish at all about adjusting around hot discs-- I do it all the time, although carefully and specifically, mind you-- but I knew I better do something to quiet this down first before I go jumping on L5 from P to A with the drop piece. Soooo, I placed some SOT blocks under his hips to to elevate the pelvis slightly, and began to palpate for the L5 cranial reflex point on the top of his head. I immediately found a relatively massive depression in the space between the L5 and the S1 reflex points (the disc point?!?!) which was extremely tender to even a light touch. I pulled out my trusty pocket red laser (200mW) and began to light up this spot.

After a few seconds, his breathing slowed down significantly and I could see that the lower back muscles were not guarding nearly as much. After half a minute or so, I stopped, re-palpated the cranial depression, and "J" reported that the tenderness was about 50% better. I rechecked his lumbar spine for tenderness over L5, and he reported this was also about 50% better. Not bad for 30 seconds. So I went back to lasering the L5 point, but on a hunch, I switched to my 30mW green laser for its calming effect. Another 30 seconds of this, and then some quick passes on the gastroc, soleus, psoas and QL cranial reflex pathways for another 30 seconds,... and I got him up on his feet.

It was obvious something was different. For one, he was smiling. For another, he was able to stand fully upright, not bent over at the waist anymore. On his own, he squatted down and came up instantly. This too was very different than before. He actually jumped in the air a couple of times, landing on his toes. "Hold on there, fella. Just wait a second before you go doing all that..." I said. "But the pain is gone, Doc."

"Gone?" I was a little surprised... I mean I knew it would work, I just didn't know how well.

"Well 90% anyways." He reported all the sensation had returned in his legs and feet and now just his low back was "a little sore." I had him walk around the office for a bit to see if it quickly returned. It did not.

So I got him back on the table, rechecked all the ortho/neuro tests, which were now negative, gave him some easy adjustments with the drop table (mostly out of habit) and sent him on his way. When I saw him again in 3 days, he reported remaining about 90% better. I monitored him twice a week for the next 3 weeks and even with his 12 hour shifts of heavy lifting in the warehouse, he only reported some soreness and stiffness in his low back through this period--no sciatica, radiculopathy or neurological symptoms of any kind. And "J" had missed only one day of work.

A few days after his appointment with the orthopedist, I got a sciatica referral from that group.

London Calling... for CLRT!

It's official! This fall we'll be translating the CLRT manual into... English!

The first international seminar on CLRT featuring Dr. Nick Wise will be held at the London Gatwick Hilton on Saturday, October 24th, 2009. Cost is £120 and the 7 hours will contribute to CPD points. There will be some great specials on my advanced kit and lasers at the seminar, so sign up quickly as seating is limited. Keep your mince pies peeled for more details coming soon!

For registration and more info, contact Gill Jacobs at gill@lightforhealth.co.uk.