Medicine has a whole chemical arsenal at its disposal to respond to the various symptoms and pathologies presented by patients. It aims to create the conditions for them to recover by assimilating these substances with varying degrees of success. The fact remains that the patient remains the essential element of his recovery. It has a few tools to ensure its own healing with the restorative and stem cell systems. They are the foundations of PSR.
- 8.21 – The Restorative System
- 8.22 – Stem cells
- 8.23 – Cell renewal
- 8.24 – The Placebo Effect
8.21 – Restorative system
- recognize cellular dysfunctions as well as chemical and biochemical changes,
- Establishing a diagnosis
- repair these cellular dysfunctions on the spot by his own means.
An American doctor, Dr. Andrew Weil, in his book « The Medical Corps » (J.C.Lattes – 1997) was able to describe the complexity of its functioning simply. DNA contains all the information needed to make the enzymes that will allow it to repair itself. Like an observation service, he is constantly on alert and stimulated by the appearance of a lesion.
The general process is always the same. Immediately after making the diagnosis, the DNA instructs the enzyme that recognized the error, the endonuclease, to cut off one end of the strand affected by the injury. Another enzyme, exonuclease, cuts the other end, eliminating the affected part. A third enzyme, polymerase 1, is then responsible for filling the void with healthy nucleotides. A final enzyme, ligase, reassembles the cut parts. It’s cutting and pasting it in computing.
These operations are made possible thanks to the action of enzymes. They work at an incredible speed, do not cause any change in the internal environment or an increase in temperature.
Recognition – diagnosis – excision – replacement – resynthesis
The restorative process, at the tissue level, has the same general characteristics: identification (diagnosis), elimination and replacement (treatment).
Exemples
During a fracture, a blood clot forms around the line and fills it. It provides the framework on which fibroblasts and new blood vessels can develop. This regeneration involves the action of antagonistic forces: – osteoclasts then destroy the bone – growth factors, osteoblasts, build it. Robert Becker, an orthopedic surgeon and researcher in electrophysiology and electromedicine, (The Body Electric – William Morrow Paperback – 1998) showed that this reconstruction was made possible by tiny electrical currents generated by the injury. They bring the peripheral fracture cells back to the primitive state where they have a great capacity for growth and regeneration.
The same is true in the case of a wound. Peripheral nerves inform the brain of the nature of the damage. The patient reacts by triggering two processes: – one is analgesic; – the other immune aims to protect and defend the body. The latter accelerates the migration of white blood cells – neutrophils – to prevent the invasion of germs, eliminates dead cells by large devouring cells – macrophages – and rebuilds damaged tissue with proliferating fibroblasts. Research has shown the importance of very small proteins called growth factors in wound healing that stimulate or inhibit cell development. They increase the synthesis of DNA and RNA in the nucleus and promote healing.
Dysfunctionment
The body is therefore well equipped to maintain a state of harmonious balance and defend itself against aggression. It takes some time for the repair system to perform its function. But if the disturbances persist beyond the normal healing time, about three weeks, when in Chinese medicine the Yang becomes Yin, when the acute becomes chronic, we are faced with two hypotheses:
- Either the restorative system is damaged:
- It can be caused by certain energy sources such as ionizing radiation or ultraviolet rays, or by chemical mutagenic agents.
- And since ten million cells die every second and are replaced, errors can also occur in the assembly of new strands, such as the replacement of a bad nucleotide.
- It can also be the consequence of too much weakness, poor nutrition…
- Or the second hypothesis: he is not in a position to respond to this aggression because it is not within his control. And here, it is a safe bet that a psycho-emotional problem is the cause. The restorative system cannot intervene, hence pain or dysfunction that will last. The PSR can act by identifying the origin of the conflict.
They play a central role in the development of organisms as well as in maintaining their integrity throughout life. They are able to generate specialized cells by differentiating. The study of animal stem cells has recently been brought to light with the awarding of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine to Sir J.B. Gurdon, a British molecular biologist, and Shina Yamanaka, the Japanese researcher. They developed the technique for making induced pluripotent stem cells from any cell in the body.
They are genetically reprogrammed and can multiply infinitely to give different cell types. Their division can be symmetrical, with the cell dividing into two stem cells, or asymmetrical, with the first retaining the original DNA and the second a copy. The latter is differentiated to acquire the specificities of the tissue to be repaired: – one of the three embryonic layers, which are the endoderm, the ectoderm and the mesoderm, – that of the trophectoderm at the origin of the placenta, – or that of the germ cells linked to the formation of gametes such as spermatozoa and oocytes.
8.22 – Stem cells
Every day, our bodies make three million of them. They are present and dispersed in all the organs of the human body (skin, intestine, brain, liver, heart, etc.) more or less gathered in niches. During an internal disorder, those that « park » in the bone marrow are activated by cytokines – hormones of the immune system – which guide them through the blood to lead them to the damaged organ. There, they proliferate and transform into a cell of this organ. The liver has it to make hepatocytes, the heart cardiomyocytes, the bone marrow red and white blood cells and platelets, as well as all the other organs.
8.23 – The cell revewal
The restorative system and stem cells participate in the phenomenon of cell renewal without any aggression. Our body is constantly losing the upper layers of its epidermis while the lower layers are making new skin, all the cells of which are renewed in twenty-one days. The mucosa of the liver regenerates very quickly (one to two days); It takes four to five days for the intestines and esophagus; Longer will be other cell renewals such as that of the prostate or smell (2 to 3 months), blood cells (four months), stomach (one year), bone cells of the entire skeleton (between five and ten years), and muscles which will take seven to fifteen. But with cellular aging, this phenomenon of recovery and regeneration is less effective.
8.24 – Placebo effect
A placebo – pleasing in translation – is a therapeutic means that has no effectiveness of its own but acts on the patient through psychological and physiological mechanisms. We focus on the one that corresponds to the positive psycho-physiological result observed after the administration of a substance or after the performance of a therapeutic act. This beneficial effect, according to various clinical trials carried out on this subject, varies between 30 and 70%. The change in the patient’s attitude, when he or she takes part in a therapeutic act, is one of the essential elements.
Howard M. Spiro, an American enterologist, has demonstrated the little effectiveness of placebo on organic lesion but much more on the suffering that accompanies it. It tends to confirm its benefit in psychosomatic and psycho-functional disorders (Doctors, Patients and Placebo – Yale University Press Edition – 1986). A reduction in symptoms, after treatment with placebo, could also be explained by a spontaneous cure or a natural regression of the disease. In fact, many pathologies disappear after a while, with or without treatment.
For J.J. Aulas, a psychiatrist and pharmacologist from Lyon, author of « Médecines douces, des illusions qui guérissent » (Médecines douces, des illusions qui guérissent) published by Odile Jacob (1993), there is still no better definition than that of Pierre Pichot, a psychiatrist, formulated in 1961: « The placebo effect is, when an active drug is administered, the difference between the change observed and that attributable to the pharmacological action of the drug (On the placebo effect – Med Psychosom magazine – 1961).
Suggestion
One of its fundamental elements, in addition to the benevolence of the practitioner, is to deliver a positive message to the patient by suggestion. The oldest of these theories was formulated by Hippolyte Bernheim, a French neurologist, in 1888 and taken up again in 1910 in his book « Hypnotism and Suggestion » (Editions Douin). It encourages the patient to focus on the thing suggested in order to facilitate its transformation through unknown mechanisms.
Pavlov, a physician and physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1904, demonstrated that the repetition of words associated with the representation of objects and beings stimulates areas of thought that give the sound signal a symbolic value: the word and the representation are one. This led C. Bykov, one of his students, to write in « The Cerebral Bark and Internal Organs » (Foreign Language Edition – Moscow – 1956) « that a word can be a powerful stimulant » and in some cases more powerful than an administered substance.
The prestigious journal Science has published a study in PET Scan – an imaging technique that visualizes the oxygen consumption of brain areas during their physiological function. It shows that the administration of a morphine and a placebo produces the activation of the same anatomical structures, the anterior cingulate gyrus, which plays a role in affective states and intervenes in the choice of responses. Whether it is a drug or just a placebo, the circuits used are the same!
So why not activate them more often when possible. It is not a question of quantifying the importance or not of the placebo effect, only of recalling its ability to intervene in the healing process. Howard Spiro in « The Power of Hope » argues that any alternative medicine, insofar as it does not present any danger to the patient, has its place in the therapist’s panoply.
There are pathologies for which medicine encounters difficulties in treating them. This is the case with psychosomatic illnesses. Researchers, doctors, and men have tried to find the flaw in these failures that are leading more and more of our fellow citizens to look for a medicine that is less aggressive, more attentive to their person, that takes the time to listen to them, to understand them and to reassure them. « If deception cures, » writes Professor Escande, « it is because it calls upon powerful healing mechanisms. It is these mechanisms that must be urgently discovered. »
There is no need to discover them, only to observe our patients. There is no deception, only open-mindedness. It is not the disease that needs to be cured, but to help the patient free himself from his disruptive programs. This is what the RSP is proposing. Once the disruptive program has been identified, it suggests the engrammation of a positive program by a repetition of words in association with a sensory trigger, in this case a color.