The answer seems to be yes; not total reversal but enough to make a difference. A new study from Boston Children’s Hospital found that early neglect leaves changes in the brains of the victims, but, they state that positive intervention can ameliorate some of the damage. This was a study of institutionalized children from Romania. It was reported on in The National Academy of Sciences (July 23/12)(Read a news article about this). They showed significant improvement in these previously damaged children when placed in good foster homes. So yes, some damage can be undone but, in my experience, not all of it. In damaged children, there is less gray matter in the cortex as compared with normal children. Yet those who continued in institutions retained the damage.
The problem is that when there are spurts of growth of this gray matter during the critical period, it can be suppressed by neglect. And this is related to cognitive and learning abilities. They found that the younger the child is when placed in foster care, the better. No surprise. I can just imagine if I were taken out of the zoo I grew up and put into a decent home, what a difference it would have made. Because no matter how your later life goes, you never fully reverse the early damage. There was simply too much neurotic life before leaving the zoo.
Of those who were institutionalized, there is a greater prevalence of ADD and above all, premature cellular again — how long we will live. Early neglect means higher cortisol levels and that can mean more damage to memory and hippocampal functioning. Of course if we get out of the home during our late teens we have a better chance than if we stay into our twenties when behavioral patterns become set. Don’t forget the prefrontal cortex is not totally mature until our late twenties. We still have flexibility to change until then. After that we definitely need primal therapy. It was true of me and all of the patients I have seen. We have to undo embedded and imprinted experience kept in deep storage. Not easily done.
Here is something I could have written; actually I did, only not here: “In a study published online in Genome Research, researchers have for the first time shown that the environment experienced in the womb defines the newborn epigenetic profile.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120715193843.htm). It goes on to say that there are chemical modifications to our DNA that has implications for later life. What they mean is that traumatic experience during womb-life can modify DNA expression so as to change who we are and what we suffer from years later.
I have written about this process, called Methylation, in my Life Before Birth. So when we look to answers for cancer, diabetes and heart disease we had better check out womb-life. I already said it but it sounds more authoritative when it comes from professional researchers and professors.
In this study they looked at twins and their DNA Methylation. They looked at umbilicord tissue, cord blood and the placentas of newborn twins. They found that even in identical twins there are great differences in these profiles. And here is their important conclusion: “This must be due to events that happened in the womb to one twin and not the other.” So although twins share a womb, what happens to each of them can be quite different. That is why when they do twin studies and omit womb-life, they are missing key elements of the puzzle. Because they differ even in the womb their later “genetic” profile may be quite different; therefore what diseases they get and how long they live can also be different. And, no surprise, the authors believe that womb-life events may have a more profound effect than previously thought. They claim that this discovery is a powerful tool for managing future health and modifying risk. So as my mother used to say, “Columbus discovered America.” Their research is critical, however, to the ongoing frame of reference for understanding why we get sick.
The lead author believes we can modify risk through dietary intervention and other environmental approaches. He does not say what is crucial: how about we intervene during womb-life and make it salubrious and salutary? How about we make womb-life a great place to be?
We can do it through education and we can also do it by reliving those adverse womb events and changing them to non-deleterious events.
I think we can reverse methylation, and I have written about it in my latest book. At least we can remove some of its embedded trauma. That, in my opinion, is what reliving key traumas do, and is why we can prevent future diseases or at least modify their harm. We can unlock the trauma from its hiding place and liberate its energy so it does not more harm. Remember the oath all doctors take? First do no harm.
Before we get into the general subject of cancer I want to expand on my previous article on Natural Killer cells (NK Cells). The research we did years ago showed enhanced NK production after one year of our therapy, and by that I assume better control of cancer; that is what these cells do—look out for developing cancer cells and attack and devour. But why would reliving those early imprints increase production of NK cells? Here I have to make an assumption: when we have traumas during womb-life there is a deregulation of many biochemicals, hormones and neurotransmitters. The whole system, in short, changes to accommodate the input; and what that does is alter set points. How do we know that? Because in all of our studies we have found that set points seem to change after therapy and “normalize”. Thus, for example, NK cells seem to change set points and come back to normal after one year of our therapy. As do the levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.
So once we go back to those generating sources, those early imprints, the system appears to re-regulate itself back to what it should have been before the trauma intruded itself. Our therapy seems to “erase” the input and allow the cells to normalize. It is as if the trauma never happened; which is why I maintain that we can go back and undo and redo our early lives. The mechanism for this may well be the pattern of methylation that “seals in” the trauma—cancer is characterized by “methylation imbalance” (Baylin, et al., 1998). There are other factors, as well, which are being sussed out anew each and every day by biochemists and other specialists. We will leave that to those experts. But it seems as though we are reversing those early changes that caused a detour of biochemical set points. Along with this was a rerouting of brain circuits as well. The neurotic system changed. I am painting in broad strokes for the moment, details can be found in my book Life Before Birth.
So what happens when the NK cells are increased? We have a stronger army to fight cancer, an army that was weakened by trauma occurring during our womb-life (and also possibly during the birth process). The system has a normal amount now and can amass a greater force to fight cellular anomaly. The cells seem to know when something is amiss and rush to correct it in the same way that repair cells rush in to stem the flow of blood and help in healing when we cut ourselves. We are a naturally healing system when given the chance; and what is wonderful is that we always have the chance in our lives to go back and restabilize the system. That is why when NK cells are extracted from tumor cells, processed and reintroduced to the system there is an increase in cancer fighting ability.
Here is the good news: when the NK army is bolstered there is less cancer. And when there are even metastasized cells the NK cells can fight each and every appearance of abnormal cells, no matter where they are, and stop them in their tracks. It is not like chemotherapy, a poison that destroys the malignant cells and also healthy cells along with them. Here, it is but a matter of increasing the health of the cells in order to combat the intruders: a much healthier way to go. In other words, the system now has a normal amount of NK cells, which it should have had early on but did not. And the same trauma that may have lowered the set points of NK cells could have also increased the likelihood of cancer; for example, it can epigenetically affect the tumor-suppression genes, leaving the system open to later cancer. The problem is that the distance between the early trauma and the appearance of cancer at forty is so vast as to be incomprehensible. It is only when we allow patients to back and relive early trauma that we see the connection. And for now, it still it has to be an assumption.
This can never happen with a cognitive therapy that never touches deep-lying imprints that deviated and deviate the system. Intellectual therapies never operate on the levels that set off deviations. They operate on the derivatives, the effluvia of the early imprints such as deviations in perception or thought patterns or learning. Treating all that never makes a profound change. And who suffers? The patient.
Baylin, S.B., Herman, J.G., Graff, J.R., Vertino, P.M., Issa, J.P. 1998 Alterations in DNA methylation: a fundamental aspect of neoplasia. Adv. Cancer Res. 72:141–96.