We are not victims of our genes, but masters of our fates, able to create lives overflowing with peace, happiness, and love.

By Bruce Lipton, PhD

Since the dawning of the Age of Genetics, the common opinion has been that DNA determines so much of who we are—from eye and hair color to susceptibility to certain addictions, disorders, and even cancer.

To this day, millions of people believe they are victims of heredity and attribute poor health to inevitable biochemical mechanics rather than a combination of mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual causes. 

There is no doubt that some diseases, such as Huntington’s chorea, beta thalassemia, and cystic fibrosis, can be blamed entirely on one faulty gene. But single-gene disorders affect less than two percent of the population; the vast majority of people come into this world with genes that should enable them to live a happy and healthy life. The diseases that are today’s scourges—diabetes, heart disease, and cancer—short circuit a happy and healthy life. These diseases, however, are not the result of a single gene, but of complex interactions among multiple genes and environmental factors.

Correlation Versus Causation 

The confusion often occurs with the misunderstanding of two words: correlation and causation. If I show you my keys and say that a particular key “controls” my car, you at first might think that makes sense because you know you need that key to turn on the ignition. But does the key in fact “control” the car? If it did, you couldn’t leave the key in the car alone because it might just borrow your car for a joy ride when you are not paying attention. In truth, the key is “correlated” with the control of the car; the person who turns the key actually controls the car. 

In other words, specific genes are correlated with an organism’s behavior and characteristics. But these genes are not activated until something triggers them.

The notion that genes control biology has been so frequently repeated for such a long period of time that scientists have forgotten it is a hypothesis, not a truth. In reality, the idea that genes control biology is a supposition that has yet to be proven and, in fact, has been undermined by the latest scientific research.

Mind-Over-Genes

The science of epigenetics, which literally means “control above genetics,” has profoundly changed our understanding of how life is controlled.

Epigenetic research has established that DNA blueprints passed down through genes are not set in concrete at birth. Genes are not destiny! Environmental influences, including nutrition, stress, social engagement, and emotions, can modify those genes without changing their basic blueprint. 

For example, UCLA epigeneticist Steve Cole, PhD, studied the effect of social engagement on gene expression and risk for disease. Cole has discovered that whole sectors of genes look markedly different in lonely people versus people who are socially secure. “If you measure stress, using our best available instruments, it can’t hold a candle to social isolation. In fact, social isolation is the best-established, most robust social or psychological risk factor for disease out there. Nothing can compete,” he told Pacific Standard magazine.

Of the approximately 19,000 human genes, lonely and not-lonely people showed sharply different gene expression responses in 209 genes, many of which play roles in inflammatory immune responses. Cole reasoned that if social stress reliably created this gene profile, it might explain the results of his earlier studies in which lonely HIV carriers succumbed so much faster to the disease than socially active HIV carriers.¹ 

In another study, Cole and collaborators found a similarly unbalanced gene expression and immune response profile in groups of impoverished children and depressed patients with asthma. The team discovered that immune functions in poorer kids had more active inflammatory genes and, simultaneously, expressed more sluggishness in gene networks that control the inflammation response than well to-do children. 

The health histories of the poor kids also showed more asthma attacks and other health problems. Though poverty seemed to be interfering with the behavior of their immune systems, Cole’s team suspected other factors at work. So, they showed the kids films of ambiguous or awkward social situations and asked them how threatening they found them. On average, the poor kids perceived more threat; the well-off children perceived less. But some kids in both groups were outliers: a few of the poor kids saw very little menace in the ambiguous situations and a few well-off kids saw a lot. 

When the results of individuals with perceptions of insecurity were separated from the socioeconomic scores and laid over the gene-expression scores, the data showed that it was really the kids’ perceptions of their vulnerability, their perceptions of how scary the world is, not their income levels, that accounted for most of the difference in immune gene expression. In fact, when controlled for variations in threat perception, poverty’s influence almost vanished.²

The question of why the kids found the world so scary was outside the subject of that study, but Cole believes that isolation plays a key role, a hypothesis buttressed by a study in which Yale psychiatrist Joan Kaufman studied fifty-seven school-age children who had been removed from abusive homes. 

The study measured the serotonin transporter gene (SERT)—which has both a long and short form—because previous studies had found that people who carry the short SERT are more likely to become depressed or anxious when stressed. 

The kids with the short SERT did in fact suffer twice as many mental health problems as those with the long variety. But there were unexpected results as well. When Kaufman laid both the kids’ depression scores and their SERT variants across their levels of social support (defined as contact at least once monthly with a trusted adult figure outside the house), that seemingly paltry (ie, once a month) social connection erased about eighty percent of the combined risk of the depression related short SERT variant.³ 

Ultimately, belief modification can induce rapid changes in gene activity. When individuals raise their levels of optimism and deepen their social connections, they not only raise their level of happiness, but also dramatically improve every single business and educational outcome tested for.

Mindset Matters

Current research echoes another amazing mind-over-genes experiment, conducted more than thirty years ago, of eight men in their seventies who were dropped off at the front entrance of a converted monastery in New Hampshire. A few of them were stooped with arthritis, and two walked with canes. When they entered the building, they walked into a time warp. 

Music on a vintage radio played tunes from 1959, black-and-white programs on the TV showed archived videos of old programs, such as The Ed Sullivan Show, books on the shelves and scattered magazines lying around were all from the same period. This became the men’s home for a five-day, radical experiment designed by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer. 

During their stay, the test subjects reminisced and engaged in conversations about events and sports of that time period. Measurement of the men’s dexterity, grip strength, flexibility, hearing and vision, memory, and cognition—all testable biomarkers of age—were assessed before they arrived, and the men were retested at the end of their stay. 

By several measurements, they outperformed a control group that came to the monastery but did not participate in the time warp experiment. The experimental group was more supple, possessed greater manual dexterity, and sat taller. Most unexpectedly, their sight improved, and independent judges acknowledged that they looked younger. Langer remarked that the men had “put their mind in an earlier time,” and their bodies went along for the ride.⁴ 

The BBC recreated Langer’s experiment in a four-part broadcast called The Young Ones, this time engaging six aging former celebrities as the test subjects. These men were transported in vintage cars to a country house meticulously retrofitted to represent a 1975 home. After a week of reliving and sharing thirty-five-year-old news and sports stories, the aging celebrities showed the same marked improvement on test assessments as the rejuvenated septuagenarian participants in Langer’s New Hampshire experiment. 

One of the test subjects who had arrived in a wheelchair walked out with a cane. Another individual who could not put his socks on without assistance when he arrived hosted the final evening’s dinner party, easily moving around with enthusiasm and purpose. Those who stooped when they first arrived left walking taller and looked younger.⁵

The production was nominated for a British Emmy and renewed interest in Langer’s research, which is currently being expanded through a variety of approaches, all of which are measuring how a change in the perceptions can lead to physiologic and mental “youthing.” Psychologist Jeffrey Rediger, a Harvard colleague of Ellen Langer, acknowledged, “health and illness are much more rooted in our minds and in our hearts and how we experience ourselves in the world than our models even begin to understand.” 

In another mind-bending study, this one about weight loss, researchers told half of the cleaning staff at seven hotels that they were burning lots of calories in their daily work, enough to satisfy the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle; the other half did not hear that positive news. 

“Although actual behavior did not change, four weeks after the intervention, the informed group perceived themselves to be getting significantly more exercise than before.” And in fact, those who perceived that they were getting more exercise lost weight and lowered their blood pressure, body fat, waist to-hip ratio, and body mass index.⁶

The evidence that belief exerts a powerful influence over physiology, gene expression, and behavior has led epigeneticist Cole to conclude: “To an extent that immunologists and psychologists rarely appreciate, we are architects of our own experience. Your subjective experience carries more power than your objective situation.” 

Biology of Belief

Electroencephalograph (EEG) analyses suggest that our thoughts are an internal process that is of profound influence in shaping the interior of the body. EEG studies illustrate how the mind’s expression of positive and negative thoughts shape the behavior of the body’s internal milieu (cells, tissues, and organs).

Interestingly, magnetoencephalograph (MEG) assays offer profoundly different insights than are offered by EEG assessments. Specifically, EEG activity is read via electrodes attached to the scalp because the electrical activity of the brain’s neurons is physically conducted to the skin overlying the skull. The MEG apparatus, however, reads brain activity using a probe that does not even touch the head or body. This is truly an important finding since it reveals that our thought processes are not contained in the head, but they are “broadcast” out into the environment.

The point is significant because positive and negative thinking not only shape our internal experiences but also shape our interactions with the external world. That is to say, consciousness shapes our life experiences, both internally as it influences health and externally as it shapes our worldly experiences.

The conclusion is profound: We can experience personal empowerment. By assessing our thoughts, and then through editing and reversing negative thoughts, we can manifest a healthy, happy, and harmonious life. Today, physics, biology, and psychology collectively demonstrate the power of your own consciousness in creating the life you want. 

A master once said to those who wanted to learn, “You can do all the miracles that I can do, even better than I can…but you must have belief.” In other words, to transform our world, we must transform our thoughts! The influence of positive thinking is real, and now more than ever, necessary. Heaven on Earth is just a thought away.⁷

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Bruce H Lipton, PhD, cell biologist and lecturer, is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Bruce was on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and later performed groundbreaking stem-cell research at Stanford University. He is the best-selling author of The Biology of Belief, The Honeymoon Effect, and Spontaneous Evolution. In 2009, Bruce received the prestigious Goi Peace Award (Japan) in honor of his scientific contribution to world harmony. Learn more at www.brucelipton.com

Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from The Biology of Belief by Bruce H Lipton, PhD, published by Hay House, Inc. Copyright © 2016  

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