Our Mind is the epigenetic signal that switches the genes off – by our THOUGHTS – Be they POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE-PREDISPOSITIONS are not a ‘Death Sentence’ Our own Choices Determine our Destiny!
YOUR THOUGHT CREATE REALITY!
The Missing Piece-
– How GMO Factory Processed (Over-milling of Ancient Grains & Over-Heating of all oils – Plant oils – Heat extracted – Become Omega 6 & are INFLAMMATORY!
The Science of Positive Thinking-How Positive Thoughts – Build Your Skills, Boost Your Health and Improve Your Work – The Power Of The Subconscious Mind-Dr. Joseph Murphy- YouTube
Big Government-Big Business-Fraud-Greed Fear-Mongering for Profit? -Covid Makers ALL!-The Top Human Rights Issue of Our Time – Dr Thomas Cowan and Regenerative Agriculture- Fake Food-Future for America? Immune System Impotent! Isaiah 11:6–10!
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Main Scripture: God has not given us a spirit of
fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
Linked Science Concept: Science shows we are wired for love with a natural optimism bias. This means exactly what the Scripture says above.
The debate in science is between the mind being what the brain does versus the brain doing the bidding of the mind. The position you adopt will impact how you view free will and choice.
Chapter 1 Summary
- The debate in science is between the mind being what the brain does versus the brain doing the bidding of the mind.
- The correct view is that the mind is designed to control the body, of which the brain is a part, not the other way around.
- Our brain does not control us; we control our brain through our thinking and choosing.
- We can control our reactions to anything.
- Choices are real. You are free to make choices about how you focus your attention, and this affects how the chemicals, proteins, and wiring of your brain change and function.
- Research shows that DNA actually changes shape in response to our thoughts.
- Stress stage one is normal. Stress stage two and stage three, on the other hand, are our mind and body’s response to toxic thinking—basically normal stress gone wrong.
- Reaction is the key word here. You cannot control the events or circumstances of your life, but you can control your reactions.
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The Mind Is What the Brain Does
The first argument proposes that thoughts come from your brain as though your brain is generating all aspects of your mental experience. People who hold this view are called the materialists. They believe that it is the chemicals and neurons that create the mind and that the relationships between your thoughts and what you do can just be ignored.
So essentially, their perspective is that the brain creates what you are doing and what you are thinking. The mind is what the brain does, they believe, and the ramifications are significant. Take, for example, the treatment of depression. In this reductionist view depression is a chemical imbalance problem of a machinelike brain; therefore, the treatment is to add in the missing chemicals.
This view is biblically and scientifically incorrect.
Stress – Normal & Helpful
Chronic Stress – Lethal, Disease-Causing – Toxic –
Stress stage one is normal. This is our alert state that keeps us focused and conscious and is the state we are in when we are thinking in alignment with God. Stress stage two and stage three, however, are our mind and body’s response to toxic thinking—normal stress gone wrong. Even a little bit of these negative levels of stress from a little bit of toxic thinking has far-reaching consequences for mental and physical health.
The dictionary defines stress as “a condition typically characterized by symptoms of mental and physical tension or strain, as depression or hypertension, that can result from a reaction to a situation in which a person feels threatened, pressured, etc.”9 Synonyms for stress include anxiety, nervousness, fearfulness, apprehensiveness, impatience, fear, tenseness, and restlessness.
Reaction is the key word here. You cannot control the events or circumstances of your life, but you can control your reactions. And controlling those reactions is the difference between healthy minds and bodies and sick minds and bodies.
Here are just a few statistics confirming that 75 to 98 percent of mental and physical illness comes from one’s thought life:
- A study by the American Medical Association found that stress is a factor in 75 percent of all illnesses and diseases that people suffer from today.10
- The association between stress and disease is a colossal 85 percent.11
- The International Agency for Research on Cancer and the World Health Organization12 have concluded that 80 percent of cancers are due to lifestyle and not genetics, and this is a conservative number.
- According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, a scientist who has made great strides in understanding the effect of our thinking on our brain,13 gene disorders like Huntington’s chorea, beta thalassemia, and cystic fibrosis, to name a few, affect less than 2 percent of the population. This means the vast majority of the world’s population comes into this world with genes that should enable them to live happy and healthy lives. Lipton says a staggering 98 percent of diseases are related to lifestyle choices—in other words, our thinking.
- According to Dr. H. F. Nijhout,14 genes control biology and not the other way around.
- According to W. C. Willett,15 only 5 percent of cancer and cardiovascular patients can attribute their disease to hereditary factors.
- The American Institute of Health estimates that 75–90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related problems.16 Some of the latest negative stress statistics causing illness as a result of toxic thinking are eye-opening.
The main point of this chapter is that mind controls matter.
If we get this right, we have enormous potential to reach peak health.
If we get it wrong, we will be our own worst enemies.
The Brain Does the Bidding of the Mind
Let’s look at this from the other angle of the argument: The brain is what the mind does.
You are a thinking being. You think all day long, and at night as you sleep, you sort out your thinking. As you think, you choose, and as you choose, you cause genetic expression to happen in your brain. This means you make proteins, and these proteins form your thoughts. Thoughts are real, physical things that occupy mental real estate.
Eric R. Kandel, a Nobel Prize–winning neuropsychiatrist for his work on memory, shows how our thoughts, even our imaginations, get “under the skin” of our DNA and can turn certain genes on and certain genes o”, changing the structure of the neurons in the brain.1 So as we think and imagine, we change the structure and function of our brains. Even Freud speculated back in the 1800s that thought leads to changes in the brain.2 In recent years, leading neuroscientists like Marion Diamond, Norman Doidge, Joe Dispenza, Jeffrey Schwartz, Henry Markram, Bruce Lipton, and Allan Jones, to name just a few, have shown how our thoughts have remarkable power to change the brain.3 Our brain is changing moment by moment as we are thinking. By our thinking and choosing, we are redesigning the landscape of our brain.
Our mind is designed to control the body, of which the brain is a part, not the other way around. Matter does not control us; we control matter through our thinking and choosing. We cannot control the events and circumstances of life but we can control our reactions. In fact, we can control our reactions to anything, and in doing so, we change our brains. It’s not easy; it is hard work, but it can be done through our thoughts and choices. This is what I focus on in the second half of the book with my 21-Day Brain Detox Plan.
For now, rest in the assurance that what God has empowered you to do with your mind is more powerful and effective than any medication, any threat, any sickness, or any neurological challenge. The Scripture is clear on this: You do not have a spirit of fear but of love, power, and a sound mind (2 Tim. 1:7). We are not bound by the physical; we control the physical. You just have to look at the many inspirational survival stories of those who have overcome impossible odds throughout history and in the current day to know this is truth.
Choices Are RealYou are free to make choices about how you focus your attention, and this a”ects how the chemicals and proteins and wiring of your brain change and function. Scientists are proving that the relationship between what you think and how you understand yourself—your beliefs, dreams, hopes, and thoughts—has a huge impact on how your brain works.
Research shows that 75 to 98 percent of mental, physical, and behavioral illness comes from one’s thought life.4 This staggering and eye-opening statistic means only 2 to 25 percent of mental and physical illnesses come from the environment and genes.
Thinking Activates GenesEvery day scientists are discovering the precise pathways by which changes in human consciousness produce changes in our brain and bodies. Our consciousness—this phenomenal gift from God to be able to think—activates our genes and changes our brain. Science shows that our thoughts, with their embedded feelings, turn sets of genes on and off in complex relationships. We take facts, experiences, and the events of life, and assign meaning to them with our thinking.
We may have a fixed set of genes in our chromosomes, but which of those genes are active and how they are active has a great deal to do with how we think and process our experiences. Our thoughts produce words and behaviors, which in turn stimulate more thinking and choices that build more thoughts in an endless cycle.
Our Brains Are Shaped by Our Reactions
We are constantly reacting to circumstances and events, and as this cycle goes on, our brains become shaped by the process in either a positive, good-quality-of-life direction or a negative, toxic, poor-quality-of-life direction. So it is the quality of our thinking and choices (consciousness) and our reactions that determine our “brain architecture”—the shape or design of the brain and resultant quality of the health of our minds and bodies.
Science and Scripture both show that we are wired for love and optimism5 and so when we react by thinking negatively and making negative choices, the quality of our thinking suffers, which means the quality of our brain architecture suffers. It is comforting—and challenging—to know that negative thinking is not the norm.
Thinking Changes Our DNA
Taking this to a deeper level, research shows that DNA actually changes shape according to our thoughts. As you think those negative thoughts about the future—the week ahead, what a person might say or do, even in the absence of the concrete stimulus—that toxic thinking will change your brain wiring in a negative direction and throw your mind and body into stress.6
According to Dr. Herbert Benson, MD, president of Harvard Medical School’s Mind-Body Institute, negative thinking leads to stress, which affects our body’s natural healing capacities.7
Toxic thinking wears down the brain.
The Institute of HeartMath, an internationally recognized, nonprofit research organization that helps people reduce stress, discusses an experiment titled “Local and Nonlocal Effects of Coherent Heart Frequencies on Conformational Changes of DNA.” This study showed that thinking and feeling anger, fear, and frustration caused DNA to change shape according to thoughts and feelings. The DNA responded by tightening up and becoming shorter, switching off many DNA codes, which reduced quality expression. So we feel shut down by negative emotions, and our body feels this too. But here’s the great part: the negative shutdown or poor quality of the DNA codes was reversed by feelings of love, joy, appreciation, and gratitude! The researchers also found that HIV positive patients who had positive thoughts and feelings had 300,000 times more resistance to the disease than those without positive feelings.8 So the takeaway here is that when we operate in our normal love design—which is being made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26)—we are able to change the shape of our DNA for the better.
So when we make a poor-quality decision—when we choose to engage toxic thoughts (for example, unforgiveness, bitterness, irritation, or feelings of not coping)—we change the DNA and subsequent genetic expression, which then changes the shape of our brain wiring in a negative direction. This immediately puts the brain into protection mode, and the brain translates these poor-quality, toxic thoughts as negative stress. This stress then manifests in our bodies. But the most exciting part of this study was the hope it demonstrated because the positive attitude, the good choice, rewired everything back to the original healthy positive state. These scientists basically proved we can renew our minds.
End to Homelessness 