Illness as Memory
Many human illnesses are caused by memories. If this sounds crazy I think it will become clearer once we think more carefully about what a memory really is. For a long and beautifully written review of the physical nature of memory, please read Eric Kandel's wonderful memoir In Search of Memory. Dr. Kandel won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering the biologic correlates of memory. He discovered the synaptic buds that are generated by experience and go on to become the actually physical memory of that experience. There is not a one-to-one correlation between a neuronal synapse and a memory but a series of these synapses together can produce those glorious or horrendous or routine thoughts that we human are able to dredge up in our brain and relive in our mind as memories. Experiences lead to anatomic changes that lead to memories. The same can be said for a whole variety human illnesses.
Let's start with our memories of past lives. Don't stop reading! I am not talking about reincarnation, a process I feel is extremely unlikely. I am referring to the terabytes of memory that each of us is born with in the form of DNA. This may not be conscious memory but it is memory never-the-less. Like the neuronal synapses that grow from an experience, we are each given physical objects, tiny spiraling strands of DNA, that contain the knowledge of how to create a human being as well as how to harm one. DNA is the memory of millenniums worth of biologic trial and error handed down to us by our mother and father. The genetic predisposition to a multitude of illnesses is encoded in these twisted molecules in the nuclei of all the cells in your body.
Here is one simple example. Our bodies contain the memory of having arisen from more primitive life forms, such as a fishes. During our development as an embryo we pass through a stage in which we have gill slits like a fish or a frog. As we continue to develop, these unneeded anatomic structures disappear - except not always. Occasionally a remnant of one will persist. This doesn't mean the person with this remnant can breath underwater, but that person will have a small cleft in their neck, often unseen and below the surface of the skin. Sometimes this cleft may gets infected and needs to surgically removed. The condition is called a brachial cleft cyst. Clearly this illness is the product of a memory that was unfortunately not entirely forgotten.
The list of illness caused by our genetic memory is long. Here is one that has received a lot of publicity recently. The BRCA gene predisposes women to breast and ovarian cancer. The risk is high enough that some women have prophylactic removal of the organs at risk. The defective genes arise by spontaneous mutation and are passed along to the next generation.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of inherited diseases. Cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, Huntington's chorea, all the result of one specific gene. Many other illnesses have been linked to collections of genes. Many forms of cancer have a genetic predisposition. Cancer researchers are taking biopsy specimens of a cancer and doing a complete DNA profile looking for faulty genes that may be helping the cancer grow or keeping our bodies from fighting the cancer like it would normally do if the cancer was a foreign invader like a bacteria or an incompatible organ transplant. These strategies are showing great promise in cancer treatment
DNA is such a dense memory tool that work is now going on to use DNA to store computer data. It would be a biologic hard drive. The ways in which our genetic memory causes illness is the subject of many books. I can't do it justice in a blog essay but this faulty genetic memory is a major cause of serious illness in human beings.
Most of us have scars and many of them evoke memories of how we got them: a fall from a bicycle, a surgery for gallstones, or a burn from a hot cup of coffee spilled in one's lap. Scars are the physical remnants of an injury. The neuronal synaptic connections that allow us to remember in our conscious minds the events is also a remnant of the injury, a reminder of the injury. Scars are the visible impacts of the events of our lives.
Every inhalation of cigarette smoke causes a little injury to lining of the airways of the lung. It begins with first puff which paralyses the cilia, the little hair-like projections on the cells lining the airways, that help move the mucous in the airways toward the mouth. After months of smoking the cilia disappear and eventually the ciliated lining is replaced with a more squamous epithelial lining somewhat like our skin. Eventually, this may lead to a carcinoma of the lung, a not unfamiliar and ofter fatal illness. Our lungs 'remember' being damaged over and over again and result is the eventual transformation into a fatal memory.
In my early forties I fell skiing onto my left shoulder. I hit a patch of solid ice and separated my shoulder enough that it was screwed back into place. For year it was fine but as I aged the scar tissue, the unseen injuries to the other ligaments, cartilage, and tendons eventually gave me enough arthritis in my shoulder to see the orthopedist about. Scar tissue as memory.
Another personal example. In my late thirties I received a lot of irradiation for Hodgkin's disease below my breastbone. My lung and heart got irradiated, especially my right upper lobe. The result of radiation to many tissues is to cause them to scar. Scars, over time, shrink. Scared tubular structures such as airways and blood vessels narrow when the scars shrink: like pulling a drawstring on your sweatpants. As I age this progresses so that now I have a chronic cough and airway narrowing in that lobe of my lung along with some scarring of all my lungs. Not enough to keep me from doing things but when I get short of breath, the memory of radiation is what is causing it; my lung's memory, not my brain's memory.
Most of our memories are not in our brain. Most are in our muscles and peripheral nerves. This is called muscle memory and, most athletes and musicians, would rather not have the mental memory intrude on this smooth functioning of their muscle memory. Musician don't think to themselves, hit the middle C key with the 4th finger. They just do it. These memories are probably as useful to us as our mental memories but they too can cause illness. Physical therapists retrain us to unlearn some our muscle memory to relieve low back pain, shoulder pain due to rotator cuff impingement, and neck pain due to posture. Yoga helps us learn new postures and movements to undo some the painful and occasionally destructive muscle memory movements we have used for years.
Our bodies immune system is all about memory. We get immunized so that our bodies will remember and be prepared to fight off infections with germs similar to the ones with which we were immunized. This system can run amok. Rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, reactive arthritis are just a few of the numerous diseases caused by a false memory. Sometimes the body thinks it is being attacked and mounts a counter attack that actually targets a tissue or organ of itself. These are called autoimmune diseases.
Another place where memories cause trouble is in the mind itself. War, one of the most traumatic of all human activities, leave many soldiers with troubling physical reactions to the events they experienced. This is called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD occurs not only in soldiers but in anyone who has suffered physical or mental trauma. Almost 20% of rape victims develop PTSD. Reliving the traumatic events give rise to the same emotional memories that were present during the event. Other mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disease have a genetic predisposition. Depression and anxiety, the most common mental illnesses, probably have many causes among which are memories of troubling life events.
Aging can be a memory as well. I don't know all the current thinking about aging and why it happens except as I have said above, as we live we accumulate experience, some of which might be injurious. One of the theories on aging is that blood sugar eventually alters long lived proteins and makes them dysfunctional. This theory comes from autopsies on diabetics. Diabetics have elevated blood sugars and suffer from a variety of illnesses most of which are vascular in nature. Their blood vessels wear out sooner. Pathology shows that they look like someone much older. Over time blood glucose attaches irreversible to proteins and alters how it functions by altering its configuration. Each exposure is a tiny memory, and each time it recurs the protein is altered a little more until finally it changes permanently. These altered proteins are called advanced glycosylsation products. If you are exposed to anything in life it eventually alters you in some way. Politician use this tool: say it often and loudly and people start to believe it.
Not all illness are caused by memory. Malaria, one could say, is our memory of a mosquito bite but that would be stretching it. Yes, the inflammatory reaction, the red, itchy bump at the site of the bite, is a body memory event, but the parasites that start replicating in our red blood cells are invaders not memories. A myocardial infarction is the final plugging up of a coronary artery depriving the heart muscle it feeds of life sustaining oxygen and glucose. The sudden event is unpredictable. Memory is not involved. The cholesterol plaque that narrowed he artery may be a memory of cigarette smoking, a heart unhealthy diet, or a genetic predisposition to coronary artery disease, but the final event is random bad luck.
Diabetes, high blood pressure and coronary artery disease when found together in the same person are called the metabolic syndrome. I believe these are the caused by years of eating foods with a high glycemic index such as white bread, potatoes, pasta and sugar. Evidence supporting this hypothesis is increasing. But each of these illnesses, diabetes, high blood pressure and coronary artery disease can occur independently. Are they all caused by our bodies memory of having been fed high glycemic foods? The answer is unclear but these illnesses may be our bodies memories of having lived in a wealthy society of highly refined food products.
Memory, like consciousness, is yet to be explained. But little pieces of evidence that help elucidate the phenomena are accumulating thanks to Eric Kandel and others. We are beginning to understand how our bodies respond to the events of our lives, both mentally and physically. Our memories, conscious or unconscious, shape who we are as we go forward. Sometimes these bodily alterations cause illness, sometimes joy, sometimes wrinkled skin but always they send us on into the future a little different than before.
Eventually we all die from an over-accumulation of memories.
Let's start with our memories of past lives. Don't stop reading! I am not talking about reincarnation, a process I feel is extremely unlikely. I am referring to the terabytes of memory that each of us is born with in the form of DNA. This may not be conscious memory but it is memory never-the-less. Like the neuronal synapses that grow from an experience, we are each given physical objects, tiny spiraling strands of DNA, that contain the knowledge of how to create a human being as well as how to harm one. DNA is the memory of millenniums worth of biologic trial and error handed down to us by our mother and father. The genetic predisposition to a multitude of illnesses is encoded in these twisted molecules in the nuclei of all the cells in your body.
Here is one simple example. Our bodies contain the memory of having arisen from more primitive life forms, such as a fishes. During our development as an embryo we pass through a stage in which we have gill slits like a fish or a frog. As we continue to develop, these unneeded anatomic structures disappear - except not always. Occasionally a remnant of one will persist. This doesn't mean the person with this remnant can breath underwater, but that person will have a small cleft in their neck, often unseen and below the surface of the skin. Sometimes this cleft may gets infected and needs to surgically removed. The condition is called a brachial cleft cyst. Clearly this illness is the product of a memory that was unfortunately not entirely forgotten.
The list of illness caused by our genetic memory is long. Here is one that has received a lot of publicity recently. The BRCA gene predisposes women to breast and ovarian cancer. The risk is high enough that some women have prophylactic removal of the organs at risk. The defective genes arise by spontaneous mutation and are passed along to the next generation.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of inherited diseases. Cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, Huntington's chorea, all the result of one specific gene. Many other illnesses have been linked to collections of genes. Many forms of cancer have a genetic predisposition. Cancer researchers are taking biopsy specimens of a cancer and doing a complete DNA profile looking for faulty genes that may be helping the cancer grow or keeping our bodies from fighting the cancer like it would normally do if the cancer was a foreign invader like a bacteria or an incompatible organ transplant. These strategies are showing great promise in cancer treatment
DNA is such a dense memory tool that work is now going on to use DNA to store computer data. It would be a biologic hard drive. The ways in which our genetic memory causes illness is the subject of many books. I can't do it justice in a blog essay but this faulty genetic memory is a major cause of serious illness in human beings.
Most of us have scars and many of them evoke memories of how we got them: a fall from a bicycle, a surgery for gallstones, or a burn from a hot cup of coffee spilled in one's lap. Scars are the physical remnants of an injury. The neuronal synaptic connections that allow us to remember in our conscious minds the events is also a remnant of the injury, a reminder of the injury. Scars are the visible impacts of the events of our lives.
Every inhalation of cigarette smoke causes a little injury to lining of the airways of the lung. It begins with first puff which paralyses the cilia, the little hair-like projections on the cells lining the airways, that help move the mucous in the airways toward the mouth. After months of smoking the cilia disappear and eventually the ciliated lining is replaced with a more squamous epithelial lining somewhat like our skin. Eventually, this may lead to a carcinoma of the lung, a not unfamiliar and ofter fatal illness. Our lungs 'remember' being damaged over and over again and result is the eventual transformation into a fatal memory.
In my early forties I fell skiing onto my left shoulder. I hit a patch of solid ice and separated my shoulder enough that it was screwed back into place. For year it was fine but as I aged the scar tissue, the unseen injuries to the other ligaments, cartilage, and tendons eventually gave me enough arthritis in my shoulder to see the orthopedist about. Scar tissue as memory.
Another personal example. In my late thirties I received a lot of irradiation for Hodgkin's disease below my breastbone. My lung and heart got irradiated, especially my right upper lobe. The result of radiation to many tissues is to cause them to scar. Scars, over time, shrink. Scared tubular structures such as airways and blood vessels narrow when the scars shrink: like pulling a drawstring on your sweatpants. As I age this progresses so that now I have a chronic cough and airway narrowing in that lobe of my lung along with some scarring of all my lungs. Not enough to keep me from doing things but when I get short of breath, the memory of radiation is what is causing it; my lung's memory, not my brain's memory.
Most of our memories are not in our brain. Most are in our muscles and peripheral nerves. This is called muscle memory and, most athletes and musicians, would rather not have the mental memory intrude on this smooth functioning of their muscle memory. Musician don't think to themselves, hit the middle C key with the 4th finger. They just do it. These memories are probably as useful to us as our mental memories but they too can cause illness. Physical therapists retrain us to unlearn some our muscle memory to relieve low back pain, shoulder pain due to rotator cuff impingement, and neck pain due to posture. Yoga helps us learn new postures and movements to undo some the painful and occasionally destructive muscle memory movements we have used for years.
Our bodies immune system is all about memory. We get immunized so that our bodies will remember and be prepared to fight off infections with germs similar to the ones with which we were immunized. This system can run amok. Rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, reactive arthritis are just a few of the numerous diseases caused by a false memory. Sometimes the body thinks it is being attacked and mounts a counter attack that actually targets a tissue or organ of itself. These are called autoimmune diseases.
Another place where memories cause trouble is in the mind itself. War, one of the most traumatic of all human activities, leave many soldiers with troubling physical reactions to the events they experienced. This is called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD occurs not only in soldiers but in anyone who has suffered physical or mental trauma. Almost 20% of rape victims develop PTSD. Reliving the traumatic events give rise to the same emotional memories that were present during the event. Other mental illness such as schizophrenia and bipolar disease have a genetic predisposition. Depression and anxiety, the most common mental illnesses, probably have many causes among which are memories of troubling life events.
Aging can be a memory as well. I don't know all the current thinking about aging and why it happens except as I have said above, as we live we accumulate experience, some of which might be injurious. One of the theories on aging is that blood sugar eventually alters long lived proteins and makes them dysfunctional. This theory comes from autopsies on diabetics. Diabetics have elevated blood sugars and suffer from a variety of illnesses most of which are vascular in nature. Their blood vessels wear out sooner. Pathology shows that they look like someone much older. Over time blood glucose attaches irreversible to proteins and alters how it functions by altering its configuration. Each exposure is a tiny memory, and each time it recurs the protein is altered a little more until finally it changes permanently. These altered proteins are called advanced glycosylsation products. If you are exposed to anything in life it eventually alters you in some way. Politician use this tool: say it often and loudly and people start to believe it.
Not all illness are caused by memory. Malaria, one could say, is our memory of a mosquito bite but that would be stretching it. Yes, the inflammatory reaction, the red, itchy bump at the site of the bite, is a body memory event, but the parasites that start replicating in our red blood cells are invaders not memories. A myocardial infarction is the final plugging up of a coronary artery depriving the heart muscle it feeds of life sustaining oxygen and glucose. The sudden event is unpredictable. Memory is not involved. The cholesterol plaque that narrowed he artery may be a memory of cigarette smoking, a heart unhealthy diet, or a genetic predisposition to coronary artery disease, but the final event is random bad luck.
Diabetes, high blood pressure and coronary artery disease when found together in the same person are called the metabolic syndrome. I believe these are the caused by years of eating foods with a high glycemic index such as white bread, potatoes, pasta and sugar. Evidence supporting this hypothesis is increasing. But each of these illnesses, diabetes, high blood pressure and coronary artery disease can occur independently. Are they all caused by our bodies memory of having been fed high glycemic foods? The answer is unclear but these illnesses may be our bodies memories of having lived in a wealthy society of highly refined food products.
Memory, like consciousness, is yet to be explained. But little pieces of evidence that help elucidate the phenomena are accumulating thanks to Eric Kandel and others. We are beginning to understand how our bodies respond to the events of our lives, both mentally and physically. Our memories, conscious or unconscious, shape who we are as we go forward. Sometimes these bodily alterations cause illness, sometimes joy, sometimes wrinkled skin but always they send us on into the future a little different than before.
Eventually we all die from an over-accumulation of memories.
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