Understand one's own disease

Dr. Hamer christened the first law THE IRON LAW OF cancer. I insist on keeping up with a large part of his jargon and on keeping up with the designation that he gave to his laws. First of all, why Law? Because his work is entirely empirical. It are not theories, nor hypotheses. He has drawn his conclusions from a strict observation of constantly repeating facts. Considering one of the introductory remarks made at the start, I do not ask you to believe me tonight, but to check by yourself, which is one of the conditions allowing to assimilate his works. Why iron? Because iron is a particularly powerful alloyage and because this law, being the first one he discovered and the pivot of his entire work, it was particularly verified. Why cancer? Because he started his research with cancer but he went on with all the other affections. One could as well say : the Iron Law of all diseases.

What does this iron law teach us? That in every pathological process a triad of elements must be taken into account, this triad being : psychism, brain, the whole of the other organs ; three elements always functioning synchronically. But the birth of a disease starts in the psychic element. This means that there is a problem at the psychic level and that it will react on the brain. The brain, being the computer managing the whole of the organs, the disturbance at the level of the brain will provoke a disorder somewhere inside the body . Thus, it starts in the psychism, but since all three elements work synchronically, as soon as the psychism is affected, at the same second, if one lived a drama or an emotional shock, a disturbance occurs within the brain and immediately, at the same time, has a repercussion within the organs. Let us not forget this notion of synchronisation : it is important and we will come back to it.

First precision : what is exactly going on within psychism, because the following question is often put : who does not have worries, difficulties and yet not everybody is ill? It is evident that the little worries of everyday life do not make us ill. A very particular scenario is needed, the different parameters of which I am going to explain. Dr. Hamer gave this disease-starting element the term of biological conflict, an expression the importance of which justifies a rather complete development.

Conflict is a very generic term. It concerns a problem of opposition, antagonism, tension, etc. and addresses elements as varied as nations, generations, individuals, materials, etc. The adjective “biological”, however, limits its impact to our health situation… since, tonight, we are talking about disease. Let us consider the different characteristics in detail.

- Let us first say what it is not, i.e. multiple disagreements, tensions, quarrels all being part of our daily life and inevitable since we all have different characters. Let us rather talk about “psychological” conflict and we do not need psychology and its rules to understand the biological conflicts. On the other hand, though, we can not do without what is disturbed at the psychic level.

- It is not either the result of an accumulation of problems or difficulties that we can finally not manage anymore, nor – to take up an often used expression – the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. It is the whole difference with a “back drop” that does not make us ill, as we endure it, and we often do it since a long time. To take up the straw metaphor, I would rather say that the conflict would consist in putting the whole bale of straw on the camel’s back : be he loaded or not, in both cases, his back would break! Let us now look at the precise conditions of a biological conflict.

- It started of course with an event painfully experienced at the psychic level. But this experience must have taken the aspect of a shock, of something unexpected : have an unavoidable and de-stabilising side. Dr. Hamer describes this as a contrary effect in front of which one can only react with one’s psychic resources of the moment. (Note : Dr. Hamer gave this shock the name of DHS, the initials of the Dirk Hamer Syndrome, in memory of his son Dirk, whose tragic death was at the origin of his own cancer). In other terms, it consists in a breaking point compared with our daily life rhythm that will leave traces in our psychism of a non-solved problem that we will hark back later on, looking for a solution. I will take a simple image to help you understand this notion of shock. If I tell a person in the audience : when you will go out of here, you will meet a great friend of yours that you have not seen for six years. You will be inclined to jump in his arms, filled with joy ; but I warn you, he is going to insult you. And supposed I succeed in convincing that person. When she goes out, she will have been able to anticipate the event and there will be no shock. If, though, she goes out and does not know, she goes to meet that friend and expresses her joy : “I am so happy to see you, it has been years…”. But she is interrupted by the answer : “Get out of my way, I do not want to see you, I’ve seen enough of you!”. The person might make it a conflict of feeling rejected because what has happened to her is painful and totally unpredictable. Being de-stabilised at that moment, she can not manage this experience by means of a reaction and an attitude usual with her.

- The conflict should also be involving for ourselves and consequently that the shock is not only experienced as a stroke of fate, we could not have changed anyway. The best example I can take to make you understand this aspect is mourning : one of the sufferings human beings may experience as one of the most important. And who, in his life, has not known of will never know one day the decease of a cherished being? The disease, however, one is going to develop after a conflict is proportional to the intensity of that conflict. If mourning were a conflict, everybody would develop a severe disease. There is, however, only a slight minority of persons developing one, after e.g. the decease of their partner. One has to feel partly or totally responsible for the death of someone to have a conflict, because then, on feels involved. It is this personal implication that enhances a feeling of being torn apart within oneself and that prompts one to find a solution to the conflict by means of a continuous harking back. In this harking back, isolation is a worsening factor. When one has the opportunity to talk about one’s problem, to express it, to throw on the table a large part of the emotions one experiences, one has more chances to lessen the conflict. But that is true for any kind of state of mind and the shock at the origin of the conflict itself is always experienced in isolation.

- Finally, one should add that the content of the conflict has to be something important, even vital I should say. This vital function may, however, be only very slightly affected, what will only entail a very minor conflict. This allows us to understand that, when looking for the conflict within someone, the vital axis having been affected in him, should be found. An example of a vital axis is the feeling of one’s own value. If a human being does not have a feeling of his own value anymore, he will not be able to live any longer since he will not be able to act anymore. Consequently, to develop a devalorisation conflict, this axis must be affected. I will, however, not develop a devalorisation conflict when my wristwatch has been stolen, because it is not vital for me. The stake must be sufficiently important to feel divided, opposed within oneself, so that it is harked back continuously and that one searches a way to get out of it.

As soon as the conflict has started, what is happening synchronically at the three levels of the triad? We already talked about the psychic level : it is the painful harking back of the conflict in search of a solution. It has two consequences on the nervous system. The first one is what is called a state of stress in classical medicine. This means that the person confronted with his conflict is going to connect his nervous system essentially to what is called the orthosympathetic state. It works according to a balance, a sine curve, which, in normal conditions, keeps us active and attentive during the daytime, and engenders a number of modifications within our organism, helping us to recover, during the nighttime. We thus pass from a state of activity and sometimes even of a certain non-conflictual combativity, to a well-deserved rest! As soon as the conflict starts, the nervous system will be in alert for a longer period of time than usual and will not enable this normal recuperation that everyone has every night before going to sleep. There will consequently be a series of alterations such as for example a greater state of irritability, more restlessness, and a higher tension. The person will eat less, loose weight and, if the conflict is important, even have an increase of certain hormonal secretions, adrenaline, cortisone, etc. These physiological disorders are not specific to a particular conflict. It is only what is called stress in medicine. And this stress is fortunately foreseen by nature, because, if it were not, the person would not be able to solve his problem. Notwithstanding these unpleasant occurrences, this state is not absurd in itself. On the contrary, it gives the person the physiological means within his body allowing him to act, to further fight in order to find a solution.

The second consequence on the nervous system is affection within a precise area in his brain, the localisation of which being dependent on the type of conflict. Do not ask me what is exactly going on inside the affected cells in that part of the brain, I do not know. On this, theories and hypotheses can be elaborated. It can only be observed and, as I told you, there is no theory whatsoever. It is purely empirical, but an empirism that is never at fault. In each disease, one finds a conflict and a cerebral modification. (Note : a modification, which is detectable by scanner). Now, each area, each localisation within the brain manages one organ in particular and, consequently, the organ that will be affected depends on the affected part of the brain. What will determine the disturbed cerebral area is the subjective colouring of the conflict, the way the conflict was experiences.

I will refer to a very pedagogic example Dr Hamer often cites: the one of a woman who learns, unexpectedly of course, that her partner has been unfaithful. To find out about her marital misfortune is just the event. If she enters into a biological conflict, because it means a lot to her, the essential question, the clue to understand the pathology she is going to suffer, is to know her personal experience, her subjective experience of the conflict. How did she live this shock? I will invoke some possibilities. The woman would live, what is called in our jargon, a nest conflict i.e. the destabilisation of the family, of the cocoon, of the home and she can already see her children driven from pillar to post and her home crumbling away. The experience will touch the lateral part of the cerebellum and she will develop a breast pathology eventually labelled cancer if the conflict is important. But she could as well experience it in a totally different way. She could as well not see her nest destroyed but have a conflict of sexual frustration, as the intimate intercourse with her partner was good. At that moment, the impact at the brain level will be the left peri-insular part of the brain, being a totally different region managing the functioning of the uterine cervix and thus, this woman will develop a pathology of the uterine cervix. The pathologies are also proportional with the duration and the intensity of the conflict. If she had a small nest conflict that only lasted two or three months, she will only have a small tumour that will stop. If the conflict lasts for more than two years, she will have a tangerine-size tumour. As such, if the sexual frustration conflict is very important, one could arrive at the diagnosis of cancer. But the experience could still be different : not seeing the destruction of her home because she did not believe very much in this home ; not living this sexual frustration because sexuality was already unexisting with her husband or because she had a lover herself or anyway, it was not that what was important. She could experience it as something disgusting, a filthy trick from her husband. This will target another part of the brain and develop pathology of the digestive tract ; she will e.g. develop a colitis or another affection of the colon. She can still experience something else : a devalorisation. If my husband goes with someone else, it means that I am not worth much. The link with the brain in this case is the cerebral marrow managing the bones and the pathology will thus be osseous. One could give some twenty possible conflicts for one same event with, consequently, some twenty different pathologies. Without a biological conflict, there would not be any disease, but the woman might experience several conflicts at a time with the corresponding affections.

All this is a matter of subjectivity and one may not foresee how the person will react. If it is important to know what happened in someone’s life, because something must have happened for the person has developed a conflict, it is even more precious to understand how he experienced the conflict, since that is what is going to determine the brain area. And that is what Dr. Hamer has highlighted. He codified, on more than 10,000 cases, each localisation in the brain corresponding to each type of conflict. And not to the events! He has never said that every misled woman was going to develop this or that pathology, that every man having lost his job was going to develop this or that disease. He highlighted a relation that I never caught at fault, between the experience one has to look for while discussing with the patient – and that is not always that easy – an area of the disturbed brain and the affection of an organ. He thus established the triad circuit for all conflicts. It infinitely more precise than a smoggy relation such as having a good state of mind or not, bothering about something or not…

I would also insist on the fact that in order to understand a conflict and the experience of the shock that enhanced it, one has always interest in looking for the most “fundamental” experience, for the core of what the patient has lived. That is the reason why Dr. Hamer often presents the conflict in animal terms, because it still is the easiest way to understand it. A conflict is not something idealised. It always is something emotional, rather fundamental emotions vital for the one experiencing them. It is not vital for someone to realise this or that professional project for example, but failing its realisation might be vital in that he feels de-valorised. It is this de-valorisation aspect that has to be considered and not an a posteriori and more intellectualised “judgement” of failure. One has to look for the emotion that really disturbed him, far beyond the events and there we will always encounter psychic and always basic resents : fear, de-valorisation, disgust, rejection, threat, rivalry, hindrance, blemish, depossession, etc. Those emotions are finally the same as for animals, the brain of which is far close to ours, and the biological laws evenso apply to the animal reign. With the human being though, the psychic sphere is much more extended and the possibilities to develop a conflict are far more frequent. But as far as the brain and the body are concerned, it all happens in the same way with man and animal.

Let us take someone who develops a territory conflict. With an animal, the territorial concept is simple. It is an area he is going to mark by means of defecation or miction and he might develop a conflict if some other animal enters his territory or touches one of his females, if he is a ringleader. With man, however, the territory is a much more extended concept. It is his action field ; it is his entire liberty that ends where someone else’s liberty starts. Human territory, on the one hand, comprises his private sphere, his partner, his children, the objects he owns, even his car. A man might develop a territory conflict for example because his wife has left him – she deserted his territory – and its manifestation will often be a lung cancer. While a woman will most often develop a nest conflict having a repercussion on her breast. And if his car was very important for the representation of his territory, a scratch in this vehicle might as well enhance a territory conflict! Next there is the whole socio-professional extension, someone’s job. He might as well develop a territory conflict because he was fired from the company he worked in. For a territory conflict in particular, there are slight gradations : the threat of the territory, its intrusion, its marking, the boundary quarrels, the conflict of having to fight to protect it, etc. Each of these gradations affects a different area in the brain, with the corresponding pathology. From the moment a conflict of threat or of de-structuring of the territory exists for example, the target within the brain is identical for man and animal and the pathology will be the same: a bronchial pathology. If the conflict consists in having to fight to regain or protect one’s territory, the target is the same, be it for a street sweeper, an astrophysician or a yogi, it does not matter ; be it for a deer, a mouse or a dog, it does not change : it is the same target, the same relay to the brain: a heart attack followed by an infarction. The difference between man and animal lies in the psychic level. Man’s psychism, as I told you, being more extended, has more reasons to develop a conflict than the animal living rather according to his instinct where the stake is more limited : eat, protect his territory, his offspring. As far as the domesticated animal is concerned, he lives more conflicts as he shares the human individual’s life and all the relations it enhances.