WE LIVE, HEAL AND DIE AT THE CELLULAR LEVEL

My primary job as a doctor is to teach health as I administer healing of dis-ease. Teaching is what I most enjoy.  This blog is all about teaching health.  The more you understand your body and how it lives at the cellular and molecular levels, the better equipped you are with the knowledge and wisdom to manage your health.

The general heading of this and the next several articles is “The Healing Process,” and I promise that you will understand what it is and how it works at the cellular level when you finish reading the next few blog posts, and it will take several posts to cover the subject matter.

Our subject is the cell.  Our objective will be to gain an understanding and deepen our appreciation for the individual cells that make up our body: how they live, facilitate the healing process, and give their lives to maintaining the integrity and homeostasis of the whole body.  We stand to learn much about life and about how we might give our lives, dedicate our living, to the healing of the body of mankind, which is, in reality, the Body of the Creator on this planet, and to the building of a healthier community on Earth.

To help tell the story of the life of the cell, I will call upon Dr. Gary L. Samuelson, who holds a Ph.D. in Atomic and Medical Physics from the University of Utah. He has dedicated his career and knowledge to the advancement of promising technologies addressing the major health issues facing mankind today. His study of the science of healing takes him deep into the microcosm of life itself, beyond mental judgement and labeling.  Through his eyes we can see clearly the truth of all the elements that go to make up our bodies – the “good” and so-called “bad” – all of which are essential to the healing process and the maintenance of balance in our body’s chemistry.  In truth, there isn’t “good and bad,” but simply what is, and it is all good.

The deeper we go into the micro structures of the fabric of creation, where there is yet pristine terrain untouched by human hands, the clearer is the design and function of the creative process . . . and that’s my keen interest.  For if we understand the ways of life and the processes by which life brings about creation, we may better understand how we, as creator beings, can work together to bring about a healthier world.

I invite you to sit back and allow your mind to relax its effort to grasp meaning and simply settle down and go deep with me, and with Gary Samuelson, to enjoy a fascinating journey and molecular tour of the human cell.  I promise this will be a most enjoyable book review and reading, presented in sections over several blog posts so as to give the reader time to fully digest and process the material. Enjoy the tour!

The Science of Healing Revealed — New Insights into Redox Signaling,  by Gary L. Samuelson, Ph.D.

Dr. Samuelson has found a way to take a complex and difficult subject and make it lucid and understandable to the lay reader. It is very rare that someone can convey concepts in science with such clarity and still maintain a degree of accuracy and precision. Dr. Samuelson possesses this unique talent; he explains the body‘s natural healing process on the molecular level in a way that conserves the precision of the science, and yet exposes the technical terms and underlying concepts in clear language able to be understood by any interested reader.

The reader stands to gain a much better view of the science of healing and a good understanding of the basic concepts of how the body‘s healing process works.   (Chase N. Peterson, MD, Former President of the University of Utah)

FORWARD

I have always been fascinated by the process of life. How does a blade of grass grow, what determines its shape and function? If it is chopped off, how does it know to grow back? I was sometimes accused of being a strange child, yet my inquiring mind turned me toward the study of science. This love of truth and science stayed with me into my adult life. I soon realized that the mystery of life is one of the most fundamental questions facing us. Shortly after obtaining my Ph.D. in Atomic and Medical Physics, I was set on a path that would ultimately lead me to find the answer to some of these questions and to better understand the overall framework of life processes, approached on the most basic atomic level.

The purpose of this booklet is to help the reader explore and understand this newly emerging science about healing, in a clear, concise, straightforward manner, one that sets a framework around the fundamental principles of the inner workings of the body: explaining how the micro machinery of the body allows the body to thrive when it is well and to heal itself when it is not well. This topic is approached from a first-principles basis, the science is explained as best my language will allow. This book also outlines some emerging cutting-edge science related to the role that redox signaling plays in the healing process.

It is my hope that the reader will be able to follow and comprehend some of the basic, yet incredible, processes that allow us to live and then be motivated to apply this new-found knowledge toward living a healthier every–day life.

INTRODUCTION

Imagine what would happen if our body suddenly lost its ability to heal itself. Within hours, our body would age several years, tissues would degrade, infections would take hold and our body would quickly wither and die. The root of the word “health” is “heal” [to make whole]. The body is constantly healing itself. The body’s ability to heal is one of the most fundamental and essential principles of life. Since conception, our body has been abundantly endowed with this ability. In order to better understand how it does this, we must start by looking at the smallest components of life, the workings inside the living cells that make up our body.

Human cells are generally very small. In a cell’s-eye view, the wrinkles in the palm of your hand are huge cavernous canyons with cliffs and ledges, stretching on for miles. A single hair on the back of your hand is a huge towerinq column of proteins jutting far up, out-of-sight. And yet, even on this tiny scale, the cell is very large compared to the micro machines that perform the processes of life inside the cell. If we were to now dive down inside the cell with a camera that is small enough to see a single strand of DNA, we would see a bustling metropolis of thousands of different types af molecular actors floating around in the salt water, full of activity, extending for hundreds of yards in all directions; proteins being manufactured and folded, delivery systems on microtubules taxiing these proteins around to where they need to go, receptors receiving and transferring messages from inside and the cell and factory-like organelles, hubs where the most complex manufacturing takes place.  In the center would be the nucleus containing the DNA spitting out the instructions needed to manufacture and transport all of these micro machines and messengers. Within this thriving buzz of activity is found the mystery of human cellular life.

Our knowledge of these life processes is doubling in less than five years time now. In fact, the emerging science and framework contained in this small booklet have been mostly developed in the last five to ten years and is the result of literally thousands of investigators who have devoted their lives to build such knowledge. The state of our understanding is constantly changing and evolving. Our understanding of the role of oxidants [free radicals] and antioxidants, for example, has done a turn-about in the last five years. The oxidants (made naturally inside the cells) were thought of as an unfortunate toxic by-product of our metabolism, and the antioxidants (also made in the cells) were thought of as the heroes that were made to clean up these evil oxidants and save us from their toxic grip. Our present understanding, however, is more enlightened. We now have come to see that the oxidants, themselves, play a crucial and essential messenger role to maintain basic chemical balance inside and outside of our cells and, in truth, we cannot live without them.

The picture gradually becomes clearer and clearer as time goes along. As scientists put together the edge pieces, the whole puzzle starts to take shape. In this booklet, we will look at some of these pieces and how they fit together. However, the major emphasis of this booklet will be to take an overview of the whole puzzle and set up a framework that will help us understand how the bigger picture is taking form and how we can use this knowledge to make a future of better health and a better life for all.

The first 4 chapters in this booklet will introduce you to basic cellular biology and function; this part is helpful in order to familiarize yourself with the microscopic workings inside your cells and the basic concepts. Some of these concepts will be useful. including the chapter on the immune system, in order to get the big picture. The last 2 chapters, however, contain the real heart of the material and new insights on the body’s natural healing precess. These last chapters should be read carefully in order to comprehend the huge potential benefits offered by emerging technologies.

Tune in to my next blog post for a continuation of the story of the life of the cell and our ongoing exploration into “The Healing Process.”  We will take a journey inside the cell.  Click on this link for a YouTube video preview: Journey Inside the Cell

To your health and healing,

Dr. Anthony Palombo

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