Lifestyle and Even thoughts can turn genes on and off

July 5, 2003

The rules of nature are reiterated on every scale. It seems that CM may be obliged to come to terms with the molecular scale.Jim Ramholz

Dave wrote: Thanks to my cats and their recent habit of waking me no later than 5:30 a.m., I’m up doing Egoscue’s e-cises, sometimes Hanna Somatics, Wild Goose Qigong, and Ba Gua Zhang. My complexion improved according to some of my patients, my general health improved, my sleep deepened, my mood improved etc… I’m battling a little C-5 disc compression and I need to take care and work on myself to prevent a worse clinical picture.

Dear Jim, Dave and All,

l'm combining things here. Dave responded to me off list. So forgive me, Dave, for putting you on list with this response. Dave notes earlier that like Michael Broffman or Nam Singh, he's giving his patients dietary guidelines to read about before applying other CM modalities. As you can see above, Dave clearly practices what he preaches. I sense that most people on this list (or certainly more than half) do indeed practice internal cultivations and pay close attention to personal lifestyle. Acupuncture, moxa, and herbal formulas are but an addendum to most of the CM practitioners I know. Yet, I'm wondering how that translates to the earlier post I placed regarding the single most destructive force in America right now is diet and lifestyle. I believe that CM practitioners mostly make their living from acupuncture and herbs yet many have iterated my own sense that acupuncture and herbs work better (or at all) when diet and life style are addressed early on. Clearly the call from on high is to get MDs to also address diet and lifestyle rather than to just develop methods to treat the results of excess. I realize that dietary and lifestyle counseling is not the standard medical training in either Western or CM schools. But of course it's what's needed.

The molecular level is answered by diet and lifestyle in my opinion. Harken back to an earlier post (March or April?) that garnered both positive and negative responses. I noted that the body's own internal dosaging is what is stimulated in my opinion by CM. Certainly it is with regard to internal cultivation, diet and positive lifestyle changes. We just noted that thought and emotion turn on and off genes. More and more of late I've seen a number of practitioners starting to teach tai chi and qi gong as part of the benefits package that they offer their patients. If the patient is a regular patient to someone's clinic, the patient can also attend the clinic's tai chi and qi gong class for a nominal fee. With 4 to 8 patients plus their family member in attendance it pays the bills. In addition, the practitioner then has a group audience for comments on diet and lifestyle. It means the acupuncture and herbal formulas are more likely to be effective. Everyone wins.

Well this is my current focus for now during the intensity of teaching a summer session and managing a business during a weak economy. I'm thankful for good practices and good sleep. I'm with you, Dave! Now if I can just get up to speed with those Ramholzian pulse techniques. I could test the effects of tai chi versus poetry writing versus calligraphy. ;-)

Emmanuel Segmen