(Breather) As I discussed in the previous breather show, Dr. Lipton asserts that we spend 95-99% in daily life operating from subconscious programming. This show is going to get a little science-y as it’s extremely important to understand just how your thoughts are directing your genetic and cellular function.

Get Over Yourself Podcast

Brad: 00:00 Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author an athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit and happy in hectic, high stress modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge and expertly balanced that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.

Brad: 02:58 Brad [00:04:26] Okay. If you’re ready Welcome to part two where we get a little more sciency in deep with these amazing insights inspired by the great book Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton. So please listen to the first show where I present the compelling premise that our thoughts can manifest a new reality. So the opening premise for this discussion as not too pleasant, I was not too happy to learn this about myself. I want to think of myself as a conscious, mindful human being. But in Biology of Belief, Dr Lipton explains that by the age of 35, 95 to 99% of your thoughts and actions originate from the habitual programming of the subconscious mind. This mostly happened between the ages of zero and six when we absorb all of our environmental happenings like a sponge. So these are your memorized behaviors, emotional reactions, beliefs, and perceptions that run in the background, like an application on your smartphone.

Brad: 05:32 Brain scientists report that we think between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day, and that 98% of them are identical to yesterday’s thoughts. And that 80% of your subconscious thoughts are negative. And listen to my shows with Christopher Smith, uh, with the applicability to the Golfer and standing over a shot where you have to hit it across water onto the green and the subconscious programming kicks in about what a crappy player you are. And you might even verbalize some of these self limiting beliefs that will have a tremendous impact on your ability to execute the proper shot because you lack the confidence and you have hard wired beliefs based on flawed, traumatic past programming from hitting crappy shots. So we want to escape from this prison and, uh, leveraging the content from the last show. We, we’re going to get into some epi genetics 101.

Brad: 06:32 That’s the study of how it, the environmental signals of all kinds effect genetic function, epi genetics. So an environmental signal is that anything could be a workout stimulus, like lifting a weight. It could be jumping into the chest freezer for a cold plunge. That’s an environmental signal fo sho, or it could be the formation of a thought. Then what happens is that each of our cells have extremely thin membranes with receptors that extend from the inside to the outside of the membrane. The receptors process signals from the environment signals that are mediated by switches in the membranes, which Lipton calls, perception switches. So our perception switches send signals to kickstart the familiar process of transcription and translation. Uh, you may know this from the central dogma of molecular biology. I would know it, too, if I had paid attention in biology class in high school.

Brad: 07:34 So I had to brush up on this stuff when creating the primal health coach, a coach coaching course material. Uh, but this is the basics of biological function in the cells. So this transcription and translation is whereby DNA information in the cell’s nucleus flows to the RNA which interacts with Ribazone, which is a protein making a machinery located in yourselves. And the specific amino acids are assembled into protein molecules that are needed to make, for example, a liver cell, a muscle cell, or any other highly specialized cell in the body. So that’s just basic science. The central dogma of molecular biology and how a cellular function works. Uh, but we’re adding this layer of insight about the perception switches that is actually telling the, uh, DNA what to do. This story, this overlay with the insight about the perception switches refutes the dated notions that the nucleus and the genetic coding contained inside of the nucleus or the brains of the cell with the membrane just serving as this passive bystander, uh, to contain the cellular material inside a cell. Actually the membrane and its receptors are they actual brains of the cell.

Brad: 08:55 That means genetic determinism is BS. We’re not walking around, uh, subject to the mercy of these genes that have no brain. We are sending signals from the environment to tell ourselves what to do. Quoting Lipton, the cell membrane is an organic information processor. It senses the environment and converts that awareness into information that can influence the activity of protein pathways and control the expression of genes end quote, if you need to come up for air, if it’s getting too scientific, just hang for a little bit because we’re trying to put everything into a practical significance here. Right now we’re just talking about how environmental signals actually can influence cellular function rather than this stuff happening independent. It’s important because when we catch a cold or get a sore throat or get a migraine or get cancer, this stuff is not happening independent of environmental signals like we might erroneously believe the traffic jam example.

Brad: 10:00 Again, if you get all frustrated and spike your stress hormones and suppress immune function, you’re going down a slippery downward slope. Same with your self limiting beliefs and thoughts that effect cellular function. Okay, so if your perception switches in the cell membranes detect that you are having a lousy day boohoo my traffic jam, my boss is so mean to me, they will consult your DNA genetic blueprint instructions for making what? Stress hormones or making tears of sadness and anguish and frustration, and then these gene transcription factors back to the basic notions of biology will manifest into a tearful reality. If, instead, your perception switches detect that the traffic jam is a great chance to listen to an interesting podcast, engage some deep diaphragmatic breathing, these good vibes will literally, that’s the key word here, these good vibes will literally permeate your being. You will instead produce mood elevating hormones like Serotonin and dopamine along with a smile and a lightness in your step when you finally arrive at your destination.

Brad: 11:13 Oh my gosh. Hopefully my friend Gil is listening and referencing back to a college years, we had the single worst traffic jam nightmare of all time driving from San Diego to Los Angeles. I think it’s 120, 140 miles. And it took us five hours. Count them five hours nonstop. Traffic jam was a hundred degree day, smoggy back in those days. Folks, let me tell you, in Los Angeles, and So Cal is looking a lot better, but in that five hours we had the greatest time and a lifetime of fun, exciting memories because Gil was a wild man back then and he did some fun stuff to his car. Like he, uh, took a screwdriver and switched the, uh, windshield wiper, a dispenser sideways. So we’d pull up to a car, remember it’s a hot day, we’d get a convertible, maybe a next to us, and he’d hit his windshield wiper squirters and the car next to us or the folks in the convertible would get squirted from water and we’d have a straight face looking straight ahead.

Brad: 12:14 And it was never ending source of amusement, especially in a traffic jam. Uh, he’d do other things like, uh, spontaneously get out of his car and jump into another car, especially if there were cute girls in the other car and ride with them for awhile. And sometimes we’d get 80 yards behind or 80 yards ahead. But anyway, there’s the traffic jam example brought to real life by Brad Kearns and old memories of crazy times. Yeah. So, um, this theory of relativity applies here, too, from our friend Einstein. Your perception of time itself can alter, right. So if that five hour traffic jam is an absolute misery, anyone else? Raise your hand if you were in that traffic jam on a summer day, a mid eighties, driving north on the 5 and the 405. Well that five hours will seem like an eternity. But to us it was over with in a snap because we were having fun the entire time.

Brad: 13:09 And so we actually have the scientific fact that you can go to the fancy clock at the observatory and realize that a 60 seconds, 60 minutes makes an hour. But this significance, this significance of time is irrelevant without the perception of the observer. You get what I’m saying? So the five hour traffic jam is literally five hours. That’s right. But it has completely different associations based on our perception switches and what we think about it and what hormones we manufacturer. Okay. So speaking of these perceptions, Doctor Lipton explains that we have three fundamental categories of our perceptions. Number one, perceptions that promote a growth response in the cells that would be moving toward a stimulus. We’re leaning into the exciting time of a traffic jam. Number two is those that promote or protection response, moving away from the stimulus that would be encountering the vicious tiger in primal times and having to move away from that stimulus and being riddled with a incredible fear in one second flat. Soon as you see the predator. Finally, we have the elevator music. That’s the cute term, uh, invented by Dr Lipton for perceptions that do not trigger a response. So it’s sort of like background stimulus that has no positive or negative response. That might be your old boyfriend after your 78th argument where he’s going off and you’re not really listening to the words and you could give a crap. So I don’t know. Is that progress from triggering a, uh, protection response at every argument, I don’t know.

Brad: 15:00 Well, what’s the most powerful trigger for that vaunted growth response. Obviously the growth response is promoting health, longevity, wellbeing, of course, it’s love. What’s the biggest trigger for the protection response? That would be fear. So we have love and fear on opposite ends of the spectrum. No, sorry. Your cells can’t do both. It’s either one or the other. Choose either a growth response or a protection response, excuse me, or door number three, the elevator music, the lack of response. So if you’re going through life with a lack of response, either way, that could be a problem, right? You just kinda dead going through the motions. But we want to go for these growth responses. So love being the most powerful trigger. And when you, uh, activated growth response, the HPA axis, you’ve heard of that, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis carries out either of these responses, either the growth response or the protection response.

Brad: 15:58 So when the HPA axis kicks into gear via a threatening environmental stimulus, that message hits the hypothalamus. That’s the brain’s control tower for all manner of a hormonal and metabolic function. You will signal your pituitary gland. That’s the master gland that controls the activity in trillions of cells throughout your body. You will signal the pituitary to mount a protective response known as the fight or flight response, right? The adrenal glands are going to flood the bloodstream with stress hormones and you repeatedly and abusively stimulate this fight or flight response. Your health is going into the toilet. And you’re going to accelerate aging. And that is pretty much the essence of hectic, high stress, modern life isn’t it though, is overstimulating triggering this fight or flight response all day long with the dysfunctional family interaction in the morning yelling at your teenager as he or she heads off to school for a whole bunch of fight or flight stimulation because that could be a rough time developing your identity and processing these messages and trying to balance that, uh, uh, that, that stored subconscious programming, that flood programming that came from zero to six and make sense of it all a man, what allows the way to start the day?

Brad: 17:17 And then you jump into the traffic jam and then you go see your mean boss and get criticized and you’re triggering these protective protection responses all day long. Fight or flight response becomes exhausted. Immune system is suppressed and it’s bad news. So we have to be aware that our cells are either in growth mode, protection mode or elevator music. They cannot multitask. Is this cellular function stuff important? Yes, it is. It literally has life or death repercussions. Here’s an amazing insight from a book we published a long time ago called the Primal Prescription by Robert Murphy and Dr Doug McGuff. McGuff also wrote Body by Science ,great book and he was talking about some science that was published in the Annals of Family Medicine 2013 a study revealing that women who receive false positive results on their mammograms have to sit in fear for a certain period of time until the accurate diagnosis or the further screening happens comes through.

Brad: 18:25 These women were found to have experienced the same level of psycho social harm as women who received an actual diagnosis of cancer. Sometimes this stuff was corrected in days, right? You go for your followup and they go, okay, uh, actually you’re okay. Sorry about that. I hope you had a great weekend. No, really I didn’t. I was a flooding my sales with a protection response. And guess what? You knew how long the repercussions lasted from this short term protection response due to the false positive? Six months they were flooded with stress hormones and protection responses for six months and this stuff can decimate your health. So that six months of elevated stress hormones, whatever they studied a, the psycho social, a questionnaire of how they’re feeling about life after going through that false positive ordeal. So the acute manifestations lasting for six months, but the complete and total negative health repercussions of getting a false positive diagnosis even for a short time before it’s corrected, a were observed to last for three years. That’s what’s called a cancer scare, Huh? Whew.

Brad: 19:40 Okay. So what ever the circumstances are, whatever the environmental signals are that generate these negative thoughts and trigger the protection response, it’s might as well be the tiger chasing us for the level of destruction that it causes to our potential for health. And so we want to send that renewal signal to our genes that Doctor Art DeVany talks about when he’s talking about fasting or lifting heavy weights. We send a renewal signal to our genes and anti aging repair and renewal signal. That’s the opposite of the protection response where we are fight or flight, protecting ourselves from immediate damage and trauma with negative longterm health repercussions. And in the case of thoughts, which is basically the content of both of these shows, we have complete power and control over our thoughts. Remember Carrie Sissonin insight from spiritual psychology that your thoughts are the source of all your pain, not what’s happened to you, but your thoughts about what’s happened to you.

Brad: 20:45 Whew. So what sense do we make of all this? Let’s cross promote with some other shows. How about the relationship commentary from Dr. John Gray and Mia Moore and Wendy Walsh, whereby you can come to your partnership, your relationship with an open heart and getting control of your emotions, developing emotional self stability like I talked about and breather shows, the great insight from medium.com columnist Chris Gauge, developing that emotional control, trying to be empathetic and listen to where your partner’s coming from rather than trigger this protection response. Anytime someone gives you feedback, maybe see the other person’s source of their pain and their subconscious programming playing out, have some compassion for the destructive effects of this flawed and traumatic subconscious programming. You can observe it in others and what do you do to help? Correct. It is you send into the environment, into the vibes it growth response or renewal response. Simple as validating what someone has to say, even if it’s bullshit, you can validate that that’s how they feel, right?

Brad: 21:57 We can turn the corner. John Gray did such a great job, uh, discussing the importance of having the Venus talks and remember with a quick reminder, uh, males never speak when you have a negative emotional charge. Even saying something like, my feelings were hurt is death to a relationship that’s pretty heavy, man. Females never use a complaining tone of voice to dispense feedback. It will bug the crap out of your partner. The male’s primary biological drive is to take care of you, protect you. Be seen as the hero in the story. So even minor nit picking complaints, we’ll bug the crap out of him. So really easy to just adhere to these guidelines. No, not so easy. That’s why we have to unwind and escape from fod subconscious programming become conscious, change our behaviors, change our thoughts. And those are two pretty fun heavy breather shows. Good luck out there and go get the book Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton or Ageless Body Timeless Mind by Dr Deepak Chopra.

Brad: 23:03 Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews, and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars and it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves because they need to. Thanks for doing it.

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