The Story Behind Autoimmune disease & Why The Body Attacks Itself

The Story Behind Autoimmune Dysfunction & Why the Body Attacks Itself By David W. Dolan, MT-CST-NMT

(This paper is intented to be ONE of the contributing factors to autoimmune dysfunction and does not intend to say this is true in ALL cases.)

The basic theory is based on the premise that deep held beliefs and the emotions they produce have everything to do with your health and the different disease problems a person might have. Many scientists and biologists validated this theory, but mainly Candice Pert, Ph.D., Ms Pert while at the National Institute of Health, discovered and quantified neuropeptides. These neuropeptides are coined, “the molecules of emotion”. This discovery of over 100 different messenger molecules proved the physical link between emotions and a physiological response in the cells.

We now know that emotions are responses to our beliefs and what we hold dear with no doubt. Change the belief and change the emotional responses. This process in turn, changes the physiology of the human being. Changing the physiology means quite specifically, that our cellular make up and how our glands, organs, and even our skeletal alignment can change for the better or worse. Paying attention to our emotional responses over time can give us a real good snapshot of what is happening in our body.

You can imagine how helpful this would be in choosing supplements, diet, and even what kind of healthcare professional to choose.

Dr. Bruce Lipton Ph.D., developer of a new form of biology and author of the book, “Biology of Belief”, states, “The subconscious mind (the Voice) is a repository of stimulus response tapes derived from instincts and learned experiences. When your emotional “buttons” are pushed and you fly into a dramatic response, it is the stimulus response of a behavior program stored in the mind.” These programs can be the very reason human beings have self-sabotage behaviors that ruin health and well-being. Dr. Lipton also adds those parents’ emotions and behaviors DO have effect on the fetus brain and starts the programming of the subconscious mind before birth.

Certainly the ever growing field of psychoneuroimmunology, a term coined by Candice Pert, PhD., gives scientific research credibility to the effects of trauma on the nervous system and then the physical body.

Miguel Ruiz, MD, has written several books on belief and what our deep held beliefs do to our nervous system and secondly, to our overall body health. Intrinsically entwined is our happiness and whether we are generally enjoying our life with optimism, understanding, hope, and compassion.

His premise is that thousands of years ago human beings formulated a general philosophy evolving out of survival concerns with predators, shelter, food, and procreation. As we grew in consciousness, humans developed general rules to live by coined, “common sense”, and these concepts guided humanity into groups and villages. Over thousands of years these concepts have matured into religions, philosophies, and a general premise of what a human being is and what life is and its purpose. All human cultures have this, “creation story”. From this story of creation, mankind has developed a sense that what he believes is true (without a doubt), and what others believe is false.

We all have learned though history that man has believed many things without a doubt, which have proved to be false. For instance, like the earth is flat or the center of the universe. We all remember painfully how societies and even religions in the name of God, banished its members, and sometimes even killed their own kind for not believing in these falsehoods. Dr. Ruiz called these falsehoods, “Lies of Humanity”.

These lies that are generally accepted as truth about humanity form the core belief systems of humans at the age of 0-4 as we learn to talk. Our parents teach us what words mean and what they represent. This learning is a natural programming of the brain and most parents think they are doing what is best for the baby. By the time the child reaches school, a plethora of programming coming from many people such as teachers, schoolmates, and other family members. All this programming creates belief systems in the child based on what got approval from parents and therefore, love and acceptance.

At this point, the belief system is in place and the perceptive ability of the brain is filtered to “see” what is the truth. See what works and what doesn’t. The word "Filtered", meaning, looking through a lens that blocks some of reality out.

Brain researchers from Mayo clinic and other facilities now can prove that perception in the brain is determined from what one believes is possible and recognizable. There are many stories of how primitive people never seeing or being taught that something exists, makes that object actually invisible to their eyes. The same human eyes (biologically) built those ships that sailed to the new world with Columbus. Some natives couldn’t even see them anchored in the bay. It depended on what they deeply believed could be possible.

"Seeing isn’t necessarily believing," unless you are looking with the “eyes to see”. Of course, that is a metaphor to apply to more than seeing with the eyes. Understanding a concept that is not visible requires some sort of logical agreement by the listener or an open mind to digest what is being presented.

I could go on, but lets apply the idea so far to autoimmune diseases.

Auto Immune diseases are coined as “the body attacking itself”. I have found this to be an intriguing idea. Why would the body attack itself? If the normal physiological program is for the immune system to protect the body against invaders/pathogens, what happened to the program?

What kind of message is our nervous system/brain sending to the rest of the body’s functions? Is it based on fear of survival, or fear of not being accepted, or fear of not being successful?

How much time in a day is devoted to things I “MUST Do” because fear-based thoughts are programmed into your ”common sense”. Fear of serious things and fear of simple things like, “Oh, I am growing older” or “Crap, I am getting fat!” Fear of meeting approval on appearance, fear of getting sick, fear of not making enough money are all fears. So we attack that which we are fearful of.

We are attacking ourselves daily without knowing it, mentally, with diet, with friends, with lovers, with governments, with institutions, with corporations, with nature itself. As humans we have created many ways and reasons why we should attack others for survival, patriotism, and even if they have different beliefs or religions. Why have we changed the natural physiological program of balance in the immune system? Did we even have any awareness that we did change it? It might have something to do with our image of what is good, perfect, righteous, and our definition of “what God wants from us!”

Every time we look in the mirror and say something detrimental to ourselves, like “look at those wrinkles, I look bad” or “I am getting fat”; we are attacking ourselves with words and thoughts. In fact, this is rampant in some societies where “how you appear to others” is important. Like the whole western world!!

Our deepest beliefs have been programmed with LIES called “Lies about humanity” and those beliefs that are false create great suffering in the body and in the world. What are these lies? Lies like, “I am only human, not perfect”, or “that’s God punishing you for your sins”, or……….(I leave that for another article).

So as humans we have now developed autoimmune problems such as cancer, AIDS, fibromyalgia, arthritis, chronic fatigue, and toxic poisoning from many environmental and agriculture developments in the last century. What is natural is loosing ground.

We attack ourselves with emotions, beliefs, and ideas, everyday! Thoughts and words carry neuropeptides to different areas of the body and create cellular responses. These peptides then create physiological changes in our health. Sometimes temporary changes like mild depression, digestive problems, elimination problems, headaches, stress, and more! Our governments over the last thousands of years have convinced us that it is OK to kill our neighbor when they don’t agree or submit. We call it patriotism and culturally agree that it is honorable to kill our neighbor when our government tells us to. Remember Caesar or Hitler? Or Alexander the Great…or Genghis Kahn…Leaders and governments who told their armies they were on a mission from God or were doing what is patriotic and expected of them for honor. We have labeled this belief, the cost of freedom. To stay free we must kill! Make the other group submit to our beliefs or die. (Another LIE of HUMANITY)

As long as we attack others, we will utilize the belief that this is just, honorable, and intelligent. This includes even the mild forms in daily life such gossiping, self criticism, self doubt, denying ourselves happiness for some reason that we don’t even believe in, so we can save face to our families or neighbors.

We attack ourselves and others based on reasons we think are common sense when in reality, it is programming instilled in us ancestrally. Thousands of years of belief have affected billions of people. Consciousness is evolving and now these ideas are being questioned all over the world as being false truth. Questioning religions, governments, philosophies, as we are now “seeing” with new eyes.

Can humanity survive if we stop attacking each other and ourselves? Can autoimmune diseases survive if we stop attacking? The body attacks itself. Hmmn! Isn’t that insane? Can we really validate that as intelligent?? Is it worth keeping the guilt, shame, or hatred? There is a way out.

Learn to love our self. Unlearn the lie of humanity that it is selfish to put yourself first. Remember the training of airline personnel that tell you to put the oxygen mask on yourself first to be of any value to anyone else. (Like your kid sitting beside you!) Love yourself first and empower yourself to offer love, support, and kindness to others.

We need to unlearn all these lies of humanity, change the program, learn to love ourselves first-then learn to love others. We can make it common sense to love others and ourselves, change the beliefs that support attacking.

Kindness and compassion were the words of the spiritual masters in advising how to live our lives in happiness.

(This paper is not intended to cover EVERY possibility of why the body attacks itself, but is one very valid theory.)

Written by, David W. Dolan, MT-CST-NMT

David practices CranioSacral Therapy & Neuromuscular Therapy at The Springs Resort & Spa in Pagosa Springs (970) 398-0375 SanJuanRiverRehab.com Email – Dave@sanjuanriverrehab.com