Power Up Your Brain (34 page)

The shamanic exercises in
Power Up Your Brain
are among the most effective and powerful that I know. When combined with the recommended brain nutrients, dietary recommendations, fasting, calorie reduction, and physical exercise, they will help you heal from trauma and discover a newfound inner peace and creativity. They will allow you to take part in the most ancient experience in human consciousness.

We invite you to try the program and take your brain out for a spin to see what it can do. But first, you must get rid of the chocolate in your mind, throw the internal chatterbox of disturbing emotions into the river, push the lethargic snakes of interruption away from under your feet. Take up the Power Up Your Brain Program, and after you have tried it, let us know how well it is working!

David Perlmutter:
The Most Powerful Medicine of All

We stand at the threshold of the next quantum leap in human evolution. For the first time in the history of all living things on the planet, a species will now take an active and conscious role in directing its genetic destiny. Evolution, until now, has been stepwise and compliant with Darwinian doctrine. In a sense, even self-directed evolution, as we have described, is Darwinian, since choosing to pursue its constructs represents a “natural selection” process.

The ultimate goal of amplification of neurogenesis and enhancing neuroplasticity, utilizing the dietary and lifestyle modifications recommended in this text, is to create a fertile garden to enhance the effectiveness of the meditation programs described. And over the past two years, as this project unfolded, my task was pretty much focused on the former, while Alberto, with his rich experiences living and working with shamans in the Andes, was perfectly suited for the latter.

As we progressed on the project, however, Alberto and I noted how we gravitated to a more central common ground as I began incorporating meditative recommendations into the practice of neurology, and he began to embrace the technology and nutritional approaches that have become central to my medical practice.

With the thought of fully combining our two seemingly disparate approaches, we offered a weeklong intensive therapy program in Naples, Florida, whereby patients were trained in deep and focused shamanic practices while, at the same time, being treated with aggressive, high-tech approaches to enhance brain function and receptivity. The latter included both hyperbaric oxygen therapy and intravenous administration of glutathione.

What transpired was life-changing not only for the participants but for Alberto and me as well. Individuals who were struggling with lifelong issues were finally able to gain the necessary insight to understand and redirect many of their deep-seated and maladaptive responses.

Clearly, the whole of the program proved much greater than the simple sum of the parts. And these achievements have served to support the development of our programs at our respective facilities: the Center for Energy Medicine in Chile and the Perlmutter Health Center in Naples, Florida. Enhancing antioxidant protection, detoxification, growth of mitochondria, and reduction of inflammation by the implementation of the techniques described in the Power Up Your Brain Program provide health benefits far beyond enhancing brain function and enriching the meditative experience. Inflammation, excessive action of free radicals, and toxicity represent pathological biochemistry that underpins a vast array of health issues, including coronary artery disease, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and autism. And beyond maladies, attention to these factors provides benefits ranging from simple feelings of well-being to enhanced athletic performance and resistance to disease.

While I have spent the past 25 years practicing medicine and exploring the frontiers of nutritional biochemistry, bringing innovative approaches to the day-to-day care of patients with challenging disorders, the fundamental and powerfully effective role of spirituality as part of a treatment regimen eluded me—until now.

It is now clear that ancient beliefs, coupled with modern beneficial physical and mental practices, may be the most powerful medicine of all—the way to power up your brain to seek, and attain, humanity’s quest: enlightenment.

ENDNOTES

Introduction

1.
Dan Buettner,
The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from
the People Who’ve Lived the Longest
(Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2008).

Chapter 1: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment

1.
Marcel Griaule (1898–1956),
The Pale Fox
(1965), translated from the French by Stephen C. Infantino (Chino Valley, AZ: Continuum Foundation, 1986).

2.
Stuart R. Hameroff,
Ultimate Computing: Biomolecular
Consciousness and Nanotechnology
(New York: Elsevier, 1987); Stuart R. Hameroff, Alfred W. Kaszniak, and Alwyn Scott (eds.),
Toward a Science of Consciousness
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996).

3.
Jack A. Tuszynski,
The Emerging Physics of Consciousness
(New York: Springer, 2006).

4.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
Becoming Enlightened
(New York: Atria Books, 2009), 88.

5.
Ibid, 217.

Chapter 2: The Powerful Mind

1.
W. Edward Craighead and Charles B. Nemeroff,
The Corsini
Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
, vol. 3 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001), 1212.

2.
Darold A. Treffert,
Extraordinary People,
Backinprint.com
, 2006.

Chapter 3: The Evolution of the Brain and the Mind

1.
Deuteronomy 2:20, King James version.

Chapter 4: Mitochondria and the Feminine Life Force

1.
To make a scientific distinction: Cells also have the ability to utilize other chemical pathways to produce ATP when oxygen is not present. However, this process, known as anaerobic metabolism, is only 1/18 as efficient as oxidative metabolism.

2.
In a strict scientific sense, the term
free radicals
refers not only to reactive oxygen species, or ROS, but also to a similarly reactive family of radicals called reactive nitrogen species (RNS), but for purposes of simplification we use the term
free
radicals
to refer to reactive oxygen species, which has become the norm in nonscientific publications.

3.
Nick Lane,
Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning
of Life
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 189.

4.
J. F. R. Kerr, A. H. Wyllie, and A. R. Currie, “Apoptosis: A Basic Biological Phenomenon with Wide-Ranging Implications in Tissue Kinetics,”
British Journal of Cancer
26, no. 4 (August 1972): 239–57.

5.
D. Harman, “Aging: A Theory Based on Free Radical and Radiation Chemistry,”
Journal of Gerontology
11, no. 3 (1956): 298–300.

6.
See Lynn Margulis,
Symbiosis in Cell Evolution
, 2nd ed. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1992).

Chapter 5: Neural Networks and Habits of the Mind

1.
R. C. Kessler et al., “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in the National Comorbidity Study,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
52, no. 12 (December 1995): 1048–60.

2.
Ibid.

3.
Julio F. Peres et al., “Cerebral Blood Flow Changes during Retrieval of Traumatic Memories before and after Psychotherapy: A SPECT Study,”
Psychological Medicine
37(October 2007): 1481–1491.

4.
James Hillman, in the Preface to
The Logos of the Soul,
by Evangelos Christou (New York: Spring Publications, 2007): 8.

Chapter 6: How Stress Harms the Brain

1.
Joan Stephenson, “Exposure to Home Pesticides Linked to Parkinson Disease,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
283, no. 23 (June 21, 2000): 3055–56.

2.
“First BPA Detection in U.S. Infant Cord Blood,” Environmental Working Group Press Release, December 2, 2009.

3.
E. Dias-Ferreira et al., “Chronic Stress Causes Frontostriatal Reorganization and Affects Decision-Making,”
Science
325, no. 5940 (July 31, 2009): 621–25.

4.
Robert M. Sapolsky quoted in Natalie Angier, “Brain is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop,”
New York Times,
August 17, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18angier.html
.

5.
Robert M. Sapolsky,
Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms
of Neuron Death
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 327.

Chapter 7: The Gift of Neuroplasticity

1.
See Begley,
Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain,
158.

2.
Ibid., 159.

3.
Joe Dispenza,
Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your
Mind
(Deerfield Beach, FL: HCI Books, 2007), 193–94.

4.
Sharon Begley, “How Thinking Can Change the Brain,”
Wall
Street Journal,
January 19, 2007,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116915058061980596.html
.