Consciousness Influences Epigenetics

Abstract

Epigenetics is the study of the mechanisms for regulating gene activity. Such mechanisms operate on the DNA sequence and determine which genes are turned on or off: in a particular cell type, in different disease states, or in response to a physiological or even psychological stimulus. The study pays special attention to how emotions affect health. Consciousness at its simplest is “awareness or sentience of internal or external existence”. In recent years scientists have been exploring the effects that stress and emotions have on our cells – in particular, on our chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA. What they have found is that our emotions can shape our physical reality at the molecular level. How we perceive ourselves and our surroundings – our awareness or selfawareness, is the same as consciousness. Depressed and stressed people have a shorter life span, here we get the answer to how negative emotions affect our consciousness through epigenetic mechanisms. Sometimes it can take years of mental stress, sometimes it is an unhappy childhood that causes ill health. In order to investigate how stress and negative emotions affect health, and to show how consciousness affects epigenetics in the development of disease, questions have been asked and interviews conducted partly with people with the disease meningioma and partly with a healthy control group. All people who have been abused physically or mentally, as children and/or as adults all agree, it impacts health. All of the people in the group who got the question “if they have been physically ill in a destructive relationship”, answered “YES” nobody answered “NO”. They all are clear, it is the life situation and how we think and feel if we will be healthy or ill. All the healthy people answered that they felt harmony and were happy with themselves. They also felt loved and seen. The majority lived in a happy relationship, others lived alone or divorced but they almost all had someone to talk to. The results show that stress affects our health through epigenetics and consciousness. This study is an indication that consciousness influences epigenetics in the development of disease.