Anecdotes

The lessons that can be learned from the Somerville High School football team that had an  abysmal 0 – 10 season, not once, but during two consecutive seasons are both tangible, and  almost cliché, as well as abstract and nothing short of astonishing. While some of the players  moved on from high school and other players were new to the Varsity team, there remained an  entanglement of spirit that is profoundly illustrated in the fellowship off the field and a level of  play on the field together. This experience was rooted in a single state of mind of this amazing  team at that unique period of time. The outcome was a combined regular season record of 19 – 1 in the subsequent two years and an improbable New Jersey state division championship  victory! The tangible lessons learned by the players, their families and the fans are that hard  work pays off, that team sports teach athletes to work together, that mistakes are a powerful  learning tool, and that the pain of having made those mistakes builds resilience that is part of  the process of self-improvement. This carries over to connectedness, networking and solidarity  that bridges success in life and immensely enhances the enjoyment of the ride. This is because  the vitalizing nature of goal-oriented behavior in sync with others and with one’s own core  values of free will and will power, attains those goals. The abstract lessons learned from this  story further underscore mind-body phenomena of extraordinarily stable synchronized states of  behavior. Each individual team player, and the composite formed by each player becoming an element of the greater system whole, represent single systems as superposition states, which  are coupled in a phase-coherent manner forming a strongly entangled collective state.

The language used above is borrowed from quantum mechanics as often these amazing  examples of human achievement border on unexplainable by mechanistic rules in the sense of  classical Newtonian mechanics, which is defined by non-linear and sometimes non-local  relationships. The single system states are linear in the sense that there are no interactions and  hence no potential conflicts, or trajectory change, between the goal state and its attainment. The  goal is superposed and focused among the component players of the team like a laser beam,  the accomplishment predictable in the sense that it is entangled with the state of free will or goal  state even before the goal itself is realized. What provides a powerful elucidation of this effect is  the theory of Special Relativity, which holds that time as an absolute quantity does not exist,  and accordingly the past, present and future occur simultaneously in a four-dimensional space time continuum. This is the temporal component of entanglement, which is a property of the  singularity among the team players and which enables their composite ambition to reach its  collective fulfillment.

A more general idea is that of reminiscence, referring for example to music we had heard or  events in the past, could be a quantum phenomenon in the sense of time invariance. This  means that the forward and backward propagation through time is occurring simultaneously in  our minds forming a quantum superposition of states. Perhaps this is also an effect taking place  in the minds of performing artists and athletes who, when in the so-called “zone”, create a  coherent superposition of states in their minds that are composed of both past events and  current situations to reinforce the desired effect in the (near) future. These champion athletes  literally visualize their future success in their mind and they seem to force the desired outcome  of the infinite range of possible scenarios for events. An appropriate analogy would be a  coherent in-phase superposition of electromagnetic states in a laser, which leads to a powerful  monochromatic beam as opposed to a random superposition of out-of-phase frequencies from a  visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiation forming white light. White light can illuminate an  object but does not have nearly the powerful energetic effect as laser light. White light is  composed of all the possible colors in the spectrum while laser light selects only one color, just  like a champion athlete is able to “snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat”, to invoke a well known quote attributed to the US Representative James Seddon.

Linearity as a characteristic of the quantum state, assures that there are no thought processes  that stray from a single uniform and correlated perspective and the outcome is proportional to  the effort put into it. A frequently employed strategy in football prior to a game-changing field  goal is for the opposing team to call a timeout. This gives the kicker time to “think about it.” In  quantum physics, this ‘thought’ event can be equated to an observation being made, also called  measurement, that collapses the quantum state on a classical result. This measurement event  is caused by the energy involved in the observation or thought process. On a macroscopic  scale, the superposition of cognitions represents a single state of the mind-body system. The  collapse of this superposition state results in the loss of coherence and a state of moving  towards randomness and disorganization. This is manifested as conflicting states, many  different and interfering perspectives resulting from the decoherence of a single state of the  mind-body system, or collective mind-body (in the case of a sports team) state of spatio-

temporal entanglement. The outcome is often a disconnection of the goal state from its  realization. Thus, the outcome becomes unpredictable as the goal state and attainable state are  no longer in sync, or in unity with each other. Here, uncontrolled and negative emotions  dysregulate cognition rather than develop cognition in top-down fashion regulating and  controlling positive emotion. The latter is the case in a superposition-synchronized state of  mind-body and behavior.

The singular collective state of mind-body of the 2017 Somerville High School football team may  be aptly described as tantamount to the superposition state of quantum mechanics, such as a  coherent state of a laser or a ferromagnet on a macroscopic scale in a physical system. Also  tantamount is the manifestation of a macroscopic biological phenomenon as a temporally  organized and spatially-correlated synchronized state of metabolic circadian rhythms translating  into healthy physiology and balanced behavior. The nearly miraculous transformation of the  perennial loser team into an unbeatable championship team in the 2017 Season is a real-life  manifestation of a change from thermally-induced decoherence to a self-generated quantum  coherent state in a system of strongly interacting particles (football players). We can only  speculate how major a role the coach played in this transformation but in either case, physical  analogies can easily be found. After all, laser action requires an energy input and, similarly,  every winning team receives such input from coaching staff, fans, family and friends.

Figure 6.1. New York Giants in the 2007 Super Bowl. The most improbable run by a wildcard  team had just culminated in winning Super Bowl XLII in what has been widely considered the greatest upset in all of professional sports history. This herculean overachievement exemplifies  a mind-body coherence and phase-locking involving the players of a team into a singular whole,  capable of outcompeting another group of more talented individuals even at the top of their  game. This appears to be a macroscopic manifestation of similar interactions of metabolism at  the molecular scale, which is responsible for the ultimate perfection of organism-wide  physiology. Author-supplied photo, containing image used with permission from Getty  Images/Win McNamee.

Another example of this effect involves a much more well-known football team, namely the New  York Giants. The New York Giants were described as the most improbable winners in recent  memory against the undefeated New England Patriots in the 2007 Super Bowl match (Figure  6.1). A documentary of the game was recently dedicated to the offensive front line. Each of the  five players who protected the quarterback, Eli Manning, and opened holes for the running  backs were interviewed throughout the documentary describing their thoughts about key plays  in the course of the game. Analogous to the Somerville High School football team as state  divisional champions discussed above, the New York Giants exemplify at the professional  sports level the power of synchronized performance between the individual units, the players, in  a superposition coherent state as a team. This correlated synchronization between players is  called phase locking and displays arguably a quantum phenomenon at the macroscopic scale of  team sports. The quantum nature of such astonishing displays of athleticism (also exemplified  by other areas of human achievement, e.g. music, ballet, theater, etc.) is so extraordinary that it  can be equated to the exquisite organizational perfection of living systems themselves.

This book has advocated the usefulness of physics concepts in biology and medicine beyond  the traditional applications of mechanics to biomechanics, fluid dynamics to hemodynamics,  thermodynamics to bioenergetics or electrical conductivity to neurophysiology. While quantum  biology is gaining recognition in the mainstream of science, Einstein’s theory of relativity is very  abstract and is commonly thought to be confined within pure physics, especially astrophysics.  The application of the Theory of Special Relativity to biology is proposed in this book in the  sense of the relative nature of time that carries explanatory power for the pace of aging. This is  particularly pertinent in regard to the effect of relativistic time dilation that this book proposed to  apply in the context of biology for the first time. Accordingly, optimal health and metabolic  efficiency correlate to maximally dilated time. Moreover, the extension of this concept of time  dilation to synchronized world-class qualities among players of a team is compelling.

In the documentary mentioned above, three of the linemen similarly recounted the astonishing  perception that time slowed down when important events of the game were at a crescendo. The  watershed moment in the game came in the fourth quarter with under one minute left in the  game when the ball was somewhere close to mid-field. It was a third down and long with the  score 14 – 10 in favor of New England. On the play Shaun O’Hara, the team center, said that he  looked back and saw Eli “about to be sacked before rising from the ashes, breaking the only  tackle he ever broke in his life.” Eli then launched the ball about 30 yards down the middle of the  field to David Tyree closely covered by three Patriot defensive backs. Two of the Giants  linemen, O’Hara and David Diehl both independently commented that the ball seemed like it  was in the air a very long time. That is, from the relative perspective and perception of these  players, time slowed down and they felt as if they were watching events in slow motion. These statements are uncannily reminiscent of the time dilation in special theory of relativity. Two plays  later, with only 30 seconds to go on the clock, Eli hit Plaxico Burress on a pass to the corner of  the end zone for the game-winning touchdown (Figure 6.2). Rich Seibert commented that, “the  ball was in the air so long I felt I could have run down and caught it before Plaxico did”. Still,  O’Hara commented in personal communication that 30 seconds for 80 yards was far too much  time to put the ball back in the hands of Tom Brady who is arguably the best quarterback in  professional football history. Fortunately for the New York Giants and their fans, the players  finished out the game executing it to perfection and sealed the deal for Super Bowl 42. Both  sides of the ball for the Giants had to play a perfect game because given the phenomenal talent  assembled on the Patriot team, there was no room for mistakes or dissonance.

Special Relativity, and especially time dilation, is consistent with the notion that time as an  absolute quantity does not exist. This has deep and profound implications for the entanglement  of human biology, physiology, and even inter-individual scales of societal interactions. In the  chapter on Quantum Biology and Quantum Medicine examples, which include photosynthesis  and mitochondrial electron transfer chain tunneling were given of relativistic quantum effects at  a molecular biology level. However, many macroscopic physiological effects can be also  mentioned in this connection as unexplainable, such as amazing reflex speed of elite athletes’  reactions, for example, baseball catchers, tennis players, and basketball players, all of whom at  the peak of their performance defy the empirical laws of physiology in terms of reaction time and spatio-temporal coordination. Many of us have also experienced premonitions or strange  feelings of strong conviction that something either very good or very bad was imminent to  happen and it later on did happen. These are examples of real-life phenomena that defy the  laws of causality and the linearity of time, as if at these moments we had access to future  events. This type of perception of major future developments can sometimes be seen at a  societal scale with the emergence of fatalistic trends in the fine arts or poetry as was the case in  pre-World War II Europe. For example, the decadent trends of nihilism, Dadaism or  existentialism occurred as if these artists were sensing impending doom and catastrophe and  had sensory access to future events.

On a personal level, as we grow older and gain a longer time perspective the lines between  distant past, recent past and present become increasingly blurred and events that took place  decades ago seem as fresh as if they happened just yesterday. It seems that we, or at least our  minds, reside in a spatio-temporal continuum in which time has lost its linear, sequential  character and our mind can travel freely through multidimensional space-time continuum, even  being able to have glimpses into the future. This is consistent with the notion that in the  quantum world, time disappears and the past, present and future co-exist. For example, this can  have a very powerful effect on an individual as exemplified by the experience of music from a  distant past that transports us mentally to that period creating a state of hyper-reality by  superimposing the emotional state of teenage years with those of late middle age. A similar  experience can occur when reconnecting with old friends from 40 years ago after many years of  not being in touch with one another. Other examples of time seemingly standing still or being  able to access events in the past or in the future are discussed below and each of these  examples can be better understood in light of the concepts of quantum phenomena and Special  Relativity. In the context of the theme of this book, most relevant are the explosive implications  of these seemingly abstract, yet very subjectively relatable concepts to the future of Medicine.

Synchronization can be viewed as a hybrid of quantum physics with time dilation allowing an  absolute synchronization and coherence and classical physics where frequencies and phases of  oscillations are correlated. The latter can be exemplified by music orchestrated by members of a  band. The quantum/classical hybrid synchronization is what is proposed in this book for  metabolism as both quantum and classical manifestations of energy production. Moreover,  extended to the realm of consciousness, synchronization of present sensory experiences with  memories of the past generates the feeling of reminiscence. Memories acquired over a lifetime  are attached to the associated emotional states, which can be stored in tubulin dimers of  microtubules in neurons of the hippocampus as intimated by the Orch OR theory of Hameroff  and Penrose (See Figure 6.3 for microtubule structure). New sensory experiences carried in  microtubules of the brain’s cortex could synchronize with stored memories and manifest as  reminiscence, a quantum biophysical phenomenon of human cognitions, could then emerge as  a component of the totality of consciousness (definable as an awareness of being aware).

Within the quantum picture of microtubules, referred to by Hameroff as “the quantum  underground” [3], the past, present and future have blurred boundaries and as long as  decoherence and wavefunction collapse do not destroy this superposition state, the human  mind may be able to freely transcend the artificial boundaries imposed by the linear concept of  time. Perhaps this is what happens when mystical or out-of-body experiences are reported and often summarily dismissed by skeptics. This can also provide an explanatory consequence for  pathologies such as Alzheimer’s disease where memory is gradually lost, perhaps as a result of  degradation of stored quantum/classical states in neuronal microtubules. Just like the loss of  quantum coherence is linked in our metabolism to the increasing energetic inefficiency leading  to insulin resistance and then to diabetes and related co-morbidities, an analogous deterioration  in cognitive decline may be associated with the quantum decoherence taking place in an aging  brain. A gradually increased frequency of “senior moments” and cognitive decline may then lead  to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, which robs the person of more than health, the composite  record of one’s life, past present and future. It now appears that mitochondrial dysfunction plays  a central role in all diseases of aging, both metabolic and neurodegenerative.

Figure 6.3. a) The structure of a tubulin dimer with its dipole moment as shown as a green  arrow. b) A hexagonal neighborhood of tubulin dimers in a microtubule lattice. c) The tubulin  lattice comprises an entire microtubule. d) An array of microtubules as part of the axon in a  neuronal cell.

Like sports in the U.S. and in many countries of the world, music is another pastime endemic in  modern societies. Just as enrapturing world-class athletic talent reaches its peak at a young  age, typically in the third decade of life, the same can be said of musicians. In fact, music imparts a therapeutic richness on the human body and soul. For example, although it can be  argued that classical music or opera may be more sophisticated than the hard rock genre  typified by the music of Led Zeppelin, the intoxicating impact of the synchronized performance  of rock musicians, rivals that of any genre of music. This British band, with its stardom reaching  the zenith in the 1970s, was the incarnate of solidarity between the four band members allowing  the product of their music to be greater than the sum of the individual contributions. That is, the  band as an ensemble, in its effusively expressive totality, provided a rhapsodic listening  experience for many people of that generation who loved their music. Although today, several  decades later, time has taken its toll on the looks of these former rock stars, in its hay day Led  Zeppelin largely defined, particularly Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, the essence of the youthful  concept of “cool” of that era (Figure 6.4).

The orchestra-like performance of these four amazing musicians was so rich and in sync that it  had an ethereal and intangible quality that became entangled with the sensory cortex and  consciousness of its listeners, me included. This can be said of all great musical bands who are  capable of lifting the mood of their listeners and sometimes provide transformative power to the  fans’ lives. However, Special Relativity application to the rate of aging is also insightful in this  case of aging of the rock stars mentioned above (and many other people, of course), which may  be at least partly due to the lifestyle choices made. As elaborated earlier in the book both the  metabolic rate and efficiency in the state of optimum health exhibit the maximum level of  quantum mode of energy production. Metabolism is a hybrid composed of classical and  quantum modes of energy production, but over a lifespan there is progressive loss of the  quantum metabolism component and a deterioration in the quality of classical metabolism as  mitochondrial dysfunction progresses. Chronically unhealthy psychogenic stressors (both in  quantity and quality), circadian behaviors and dietary consumption (quantity and quality) are the  major contributors to altering the diversity and compositional pattern of microbiota, amplifying  the magnitude and chronicity of the stress response and disturbing circadian synchronized  physiology. The inextricable nature of this web of pathogenic parameters fundamentally  underpins metabolic disease and the accelerated pace of aging.

Figure 6.7. Illustration of the concept of a magnetic moment (spin) and its alignment with applied  magnetic fields. In the panels below this is extended to ensembles of spins, which can be  oriented randomly (left) or aligned with a field (right). In the latter case, this gives rise to net  magnetization of the substance.

Can the conscious state of the human mind be analogous to the coherent state of a magnet or a  laser? The human race has existed on this planet for a mere 100 or perhaps 200 thousand  years and through its inventiveness produced a new state of matter, namely coherent light of  the laser. Why wouldn’t Mother Nature, with its 4.5 billion years of experimentation on planet  Earth with countless life forms and their replicas subjected to evolutionary pressures, arrive at  an even more impressive solution, namely the quantum mind? The composite of all the  correlated dipole moments of a microtubule in neurons in the brain could be that coherent  quantum state that can generate cognitions, or consciousness, responsible for behavior on the  scale of a human mind (and body to which the mind is entangled). Whether this hypothesis is  correct or not, time will only tell. However, in the opinion of this author, it is not unreasonable to  consider it. Better yet, experimental methods should be researched and tests carried out on the

underlying assumptions of this theory, namely the presence of quantum states in biological  systems such as neurons.

Every year on Memorial Day weekend an I95 radio station takes votes from its listeners to rate  the top 500 rock songs of all time. The 100 top songs are the best of the best and include songs  composed and performed by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, Motown, Lynyrd  Skynyrd’s Free Bird, the Doors, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and so on.  Virtually every single year almost without exception for almost 50 years since its release in  1971, Stairway to Heaven was voted number one. It was serendipitous or perhaps intentional  that Jimmy Page said the song Stairway to Heaven “crystallized” the essence of Led Zeppelin.  A crystal lattice itself displays the mysterious behavior of a quantum system that is in a  superposition state in both space and time. Accordingly, the atomic elements of a crystal lattice  repeat themselves not only with perfect spatial symmetry, but time symmetry as well. That is,  the arrangement of atoms in a crystal may change over time, but they do so with a temporal  periodicity such that they return to their starting positions with clock-work precision due to the  vibrational waves known as phonons that propagate through the crystal. Therefore, in essence  these atoms do not change over the course of time. This is referred to as time invariance. A  system with spatial and temporal symmetry looks the same independent of the observer’s  orientation of perspective in time or space. The entanglement of the musical product in the collective consciousness of its listeners underscores the quantum nature of its effect that does  not change with time.

Time invariance of certain core values in human society may also exemplify a quantum  entanglement of consciousness. If a living system were to display such fidelity with respect to  quantum behavior, it would be tantamount to a mechanically frictionless perpetual motion  machine whereby energy would not escape the system as unusable heat. Instead, it could then  be utilized to do the work of maintaining the far from equilibrium state of biological homeostasis  at a cell level and hence physiological homeostasis of the organism. The song “Stairway to  Heaven” can thus be seen as a symbolic stairway to a state of permanence, to perfection and to  a singular state, the quantum state of coherence. This also manifests synchronization and an  entangled superposition state, which was metaphorically described in the case of top athleticism  and musical mastery. In such cases there are no conflicting perspectives, “when all is one and  one is all …”. Robert Plant stated in the course of an interview he gave that “It feels like time  gallops! Once upon a time we made Led Zeppelin 1 (the first Led Zeppelin album) in 36 hours.  Now time just gallops, moves at the blink of an eye”. The relatively small amount of energy that  was once required to do the work of a given project now requires a much greater energetic input  (and therefore effort) because such a large percentage of the energy is lost to heat that is  unavailable to do work. The perception of time was so much slower back in the day because in  the quantum sense, energetic input was correlated and thus effort was not required to overcome  the metaphorical friction at a bio-molecular level and hence there was little or no heat loss and  entropy production. Entropy production rate defines the rate of energy lost from the system,  which is unusable to do work, and is consistent with the Theory of Special Relativity. We  proposed in this book that entropy production rate parallels the acceleration of time, the pace of  aging, and the perception of the loss of time in conscious human beings. In the younger  quantum state the entropy production rate is only minimal and therefore the passage of time that accompanies the production of work appears to be shorter. It is not surprising therefore that  the 1970s was literally yesterday in the minds of people who grew up in that era.

Thus, aging per se erodes this potential biologically, both from the perspective of human health  and disease, as well as performance in sports and arts. The notion of free will, an intangible  force connecting the present with the past and the future, whereby the future can become the  present and the past before it actually happens (by the notion of free will). Again, here is  another application of Special Relativity from an intuitive sense. Thus, it often has the  capacity to affect outcome, that defines accomplishment reductionism is an established  scientific methodology that analyzes a physical problem by breaking it up into constituent parts  and investigating the smaller pieces independently thereby simplifying the problem. In the  physical sciences reductionism is the paragon methodology that can be traced all the way back  to Sir Isaac Newton in the 1600s who single-handedly developed the principles of mechanics  (as well as other fields of science). He postulated his laws of motion, the second of which states  that force equals mass times acceleration (F = ma), whereby if two of these three parameters  are known, the third can be predicted. Thus, reductionism may be ideally applied to linear  systems by using equations like this to predict the evolution of the system or to extrapolate the  system to a larger scale to make appropriate estimates by simple rescaling. Reductionism was  the crown jewel of 20th Century science that has proved to be foundational for analytical  deductive reasoning and methodology in studying physical, chemical and then biological  systems with applications to medicine. However, living systems are composed of component  parts across many hierarchical scales, vastly separated by orders of magnitude on both the time  and length scales, each with their own laws or rules of interaction. Hence, the trajectory of  behavior across these disciplinary plane’s changes.

The scales range from the atomic level (or even smaller) in physics to molecular level in  chemistry, macromolecular in biochemistry, molecular aggregate in molecular biology and cell  biology and ultimately macroscopic in physiology and behavioral sciences. Accordingly, the  assimilation of these various scales of scientific inquiry in a living system is unpredictable  because it involves many processes under the general banner of “symmetry breaking” that  represent the formation of new symmetries and elimination of old ones. Crossing these  boundaries via symmetry breaking phenomena is a non-linear phenomenon par excellence and  hence it poses major challenges to our time-tested methodologies. Fundamentally, this  underscores the limitations of modern-day scientific methodology and it has major  consequences for not only medical research but also for clinical medicine. In the latter case, we  do not even have our own laws, only empirical observations and inductive reasoning at our  disposal. Therefore, effectual and safe clinical patient care must be precision-based, applicable  to an individual’s parameters rather than broadly applied to populations based on statistical  averages as we currently do. The hallmark of a living system such as a human being is  complexity of interactions and inherent unpredictability over time.

Returning to metaphorical examples from everyday life, the astounding and engaging display of  talented and synchronized entertainment by athletes, team sports, soloist musicians and  musical bands that approximate perfection may serve to exemplify the concept of singularity.  This appears to occur within individuals and also between them at macroscopic scales of  human behavior and may even highlight the quantum phenomena of superposition of states including “phase locking” connecting individuals of the collective whole of a musical band or a  competitive sports team as discussed earlier. Full development of the human brain takes at  least two decades to occur. Between peak development and the onset of senescence, which  typically begins to occur about the age of 30, there exists astonishing and exquisite  organizational perfection in maximum dilation of time that accompanies the greatest potential for  its translation into the gob-smacking entertainment served in the examples of Led Zeppelin and  the New York Giants described above. Additionally, it can be posited that these can be seen as  extensions of the temporally-organized and spatially-correlated synchronized states of  metabolic circadian rhythms, which translate into physiology and behavior. However, physiology alone, without recourse to psychology and the power of the human mind is insufficient to explain  some anomalous examples and experiences as will become evident in the next anecdote.

Moral 2: Synchrony, Entanglement and Special Relativity Can be Found in Unexpected  Places

A clinical study in Europe reported the outcome of a treatment given to cancer patients who  were told that they would likely experience alopecia due to the effects of the drug. However, the  study was designed in such a way that only half of the enrolled patients received the drug while  the other half of the patients were given placebo. It turned out that approximately a third of the placebo-given patients developed alopecia, which of course is astonishing because they were  not exposed to the drug, which causes alopecia.

Perhaps an even more interesting example involves a patient who presented with a type of  blood cancer, a form of lymphoma characterized by a ”softball-sized” conglomerative tumor. It  was concluded on the diagnosis that the patient had only days left to live. The patient stated that  his doctor told him that a certain drug could cure the disease. However, the doctor knew that  there was nothing to disclaim and that the drug would be useless in treating this type of cancer.  Nonetheless, having great empathy for the patient, his doctor decided to administer him the  drug. Amazingly, within a few days the patient experienced miraculous recovery with a rapid  shrinking of the tumor. Years later the patient was determined to be completely free of clinical  manifestations of cancer. However, he came across a report, which stated this drug was  ineffective in treating his type of cancer. The patient then became depressed and dispirited,  which led to a recurrence of the clinical cancer state a very short time thereafter and presented  again with severe manifestations of the same type of cancer as before.

He then went back to see his doctor. His doctor, having witnessed the powerful impact of the  placebo given to the patient, decided to deny this report’s veracity and tell the patient that this  report was completely false. Moreover, the doctor insisted that the drug had indeed been  demonstrated to be exceptionally efficacious. In addition, the doctor told the patients that he had  access to a new and improved formulation of the drug. He then proceeded to give his patient  intravenous saline, which was of course a pharmacologically benign placebo. Again, the same  scenario ensued and the patient once again experienced another remarkable remission of the  cancer state. Years later the patient once more came across and read another article reporting how the drug clearly does not work, which was followed again by a recurrence of his cancer.  The disease ultimately did take the patient’s life. This story speaks volumes about the power of  placebo and the power of the human mind over the human body.

One important theme here is the robustness of interconnections at all scales of living systems  that determine health via the physiological fitness function. This links the intracellular molecular  scale to inter-cellular and inter-organ/tissue scales of an individual or an organism, all the way to  inter-individual/organismic social scales or to even phenomena of entanglement that span  ranges independent of spatial and temporal locality. The notion of superposition that defines  unity in a quantum sense must phenomenologically underpin the exquisite organizational  perfection of complexity in the infinite wisdom of nature. This book seeks to highlight this from a  scientific perspective. However, humans are unique in the sense of their high level of  consciousness whereby successful endeavors require connections between individuals quite  analogous to what occurs at the intracellular scale. Furthermore, human social behavior  involves networking needed to achieve a shared desired outcome.

When activities are properly orchestrated, these social networks resemble a phenomenon  occurring in less-evolved species, which exhibit an increased level of collective intelligence as  they interact. For example, a colony of ants forming a bridge, a school of fish swimming in  unison or a flock of birds flying together as one can achieve much more than the individual  animals within the colony when their collective effort is needed for the common goal of survival.  This may also be equated to team sports where team members coordinate their behavior both  at a conscious and subconscious level. In humans, the element of consciousness is a layer that  underscores the idea of uniqueness of individuals. This is a powerful concept connecting human  behavior to the definition of a successful life, that is one which fulfills the physiological meaning  of purpose.

The notion of purpose is found at the intersection of philosophy and material science.  Philosophy addresses the issue of the meaning of life while material science investigates the  substrates that provide the physical context for living systems and their processes. In this  sense, both emotional and physical health are inextricably linked to the notion of stress.  Exposure to bearable stress in any living system builds resilience. The uniqueness of individuals  includes the areas where handling challenges has variable degrees of resilience based on  experiences and talents or affinities, or lack thereof. There is no greater feeling of empowerment  than the capacity to control the outcome of a challenge that benefits oneself or others. The  ability to help others elevates oneself at least in proportion to the extent that it helps the other  individual(s). This is rooted in the sense of value of being part of a greater whole and serves as  a mechanism for building the connectedness of that whole at a conscious level. This in turn  provides the expectations for reciprocity of help in the realm of challenges whereby others have  greater resilience and capacity for meeting the demands of those challenges than us.

This type of connectedness engages the vitalizing potential of stress whereby the dose and  quality of stressors can be dissipated among a network of individuals making it less difficult to  bear by each individual. This type of support system is analogous to mechanical supports such  as columns and pillars that allow an enormous force of gravity exerted by a massive skyscraper  to be subdivided into these support structures preventing the building from collapsing onto itself.  In the context of human interactions, this support network acts in reciprocal directions and can empower the individuals and further strengthen the network as a functioning whole. The  meaning of conscious purpose can be better understood when one considers the notion of free  will and the willpower to strive for those outcomes that are consistent with one’s identity, core  values and the inner sense of purpose. This is perhaps a fundamental basis for why we live and  is the underpinning factor behind mind-body phenomena, that is, the link between mental and  physical health.

Conversely, at all levels of isolation when interconnections are broken leading to a loss of  complexity of living systems, humans and other, within and between organisms, devitalizes the  physical nature of life. In these cases, the life force succumbs to the physical inevitability of the  second law of thermodynamics. Invoking this perspective is critical to achieving and prolonging  the fulfilling nature of the human living experience. It is proposed that the brain evolved for the  purpose of the acquisition of food. Teleologically speaking, at the dawn of time we humans were  awakened by a negative energy balance, hungry and foraging for food. However, we were not  the largest or the fastest animal in the jungle, nor the only ones foraging for food. To avoid being  prey and become a next meal for a predator, the stress response must have evolved in a  manner, which is closely linked to the neuronal and neuroendocrine system responsible for  energy balance, satiety and hunger systems in the brain. Indeed, that is exactly how the  hypothalamus is hardwired into the stress and appetite regulatory centers of the brain. Dealing  with stress due to life threatening danger lurking around the corner on a daily basis may have  also stimulated formation of social groups that provided protection and shared life-sustaining  resources. The importance of human interactions and inter-connectedness is an important  aspect of human health. We are social creatures and the state of our health strongly depends  on how closely related we are to our fellow human beings. Moreover, it is not necessary to be  either hugely popular and have hundreds of real or “Facebook” friends.

Sometimes a single individual can have an enormously positive influence on our lives as is  briefly illustrated in the following anecdote. This story can also be seen as relating to the role of  another modern physics effect, namely quantum entanglement that was mentioned earlier in  this chapter in a different context. In this case it is the emotional entanglement in people’s lives  that makes a true difference to our well-being.

Moral 3: Mind Can Win Over Matter and Hence Humans are Not Bioreactors

The first story I would like to share involves an unexpected encounter with Gregg Allman of the  Allman Brothers Band, of whom I am a huge fan. I noticed him on a flight I was on from Baton  Rouge to Newark. He was seated in the first-class cabin, while I was back in economy.  Nevertheless, I decided to walk up to him from the back of the plane to introduce myself as a big  fan. The seat next to him was empty and he told me to sit down. He was drinking shots of  Seagram’s Seven, which he offered me, although I unfortunately felt awkward and declined. We  were talking about the classic song “Whipping Post”, and a song from a new album at the time  which he liked, “Queen of Hearts”. It was an incredibly fun and unexpected experience! Before I  left the seat, he pulled out a promotional picture of himself and signed it “To Brian…. And to the Good Times!” (Figure 6.8). My impression of him was that he is one of the nicest, kindest men  you could ever meet.

When I met Gregg Allman, it was at the end of another long day and week, in addition to the  grind of traveling. I was tired and in an unexcited mood during my final year in fellowship training  at Tulane University. I was 34 years old, still with plenty on my shoulders before I could “start  my life”. Both the Internal Medicine and Endocrinology Boards laid ahead as well as starting a  practice, which I had no experience doing. Gregg Allman was the front man of the Allman  Brothers, who were a major part of the musical influence that began in the 1960’s. In a strong  sense, this band was part of the pantheon in the culture of the arguably most expressive  generation in human history. This was the baby boomer generation, the most defined and  revolutionary generation of any before and any since. I was in grade school when I began  hearing the Allman Brothers influenced by my brother, who is 5 years older than I am. By the  time I was in high school, I was enthralled by their music. Gregg Allman was close to the  beginning of this generation, and I was near the end of it. Gregg was larger than life. His voice  and his band’s music elevated people’s mood all over the world and for many years. It was a  phenomenon. An invitation by him to sit and join in personal conversation transformed my state  of mind. Instantly, I went from feeling dull and apathetic to having great excitement that lasted  the entire day. A grinding trip had become electrifying and fun. Where did that burst of energy  come from? It came from a powerful and real connection with another person who happened to  be one of my favorite musicians of all time.

Moreover, the above story speaks to something that may seem indirect, but that is foundational  to the nature of the stress response, and even essential to achieve the joys and successes out  of life. The stress response across many perspectives and all scales of human biology is a  major theme of both volumes of this book, with deep implications to the future of Medicine. The  experiences that build resilience and evolve personal skill sets, coupled to the heterogeneity of  genetic talents give each of us value, to ourselves and for others. This notion underscores an  often-unconscious drive to better us; not only does it lift our potential and feeling of  accomplishment, but nothing ennobles our own psyche more than elevating the opportunities or  mood of others. This in my opinion puts a finger on the pulse of a reciprocally positive vitalizing  experience of human connection. The feeling of awe meeting Gregg Allman represents perhaps  a microcosm of what we all strive to do for others, albeit we all do it in our uniquely different  contexts.

Figure 6.8: Signed photograph by Gregg Allman. The joys and successes in life that we all  experience in our unique ways are part of an interwoven fabric of humanity. A central aspect of  this social entanglement is not only to reach one’s own maximum potential of achievement but to connect it to the enrichment or betterment of the lives of others. This results in an intrinsic  sense of awe that a lone quest for stardom cannot give.

The next story is about the important positive influence a Physical Education aide had on my  son, who has cerebral palsy. This person who could at first glance be viewed as only  peripherally relevant from the perspective of my son, Matthew, played a major role in his sense  of happiness and belonging at his school. This kind and unassuming gentleman unexpectedly  died recently after he had just turned 54. My son had a great affection for him and vice versa.  He helped Matthew from the age of 5 through 8th grade. He worked hard with my son to have  him walk up part of the distance to receive his diploma in 8th grade. He set up props to lean on  and worked on and practiced for months. This culminated with a tear jerking 5 minute standing  ovation at the time Matthew received his diploma. They kept in touch over the years and  recently Matthew told him he was graduating Raritan Valley Community College this year. The  gentleman replied how proud he was of Matthew’s accomplishments. The gentleman’s wife and  daughter texted my son that he always had a big smile on his face whenever he spoke of him,  that he was so inspired by Matthew. At the gentleman’s wake, there were thousands of people  showing their respects. This shows how small acts of kindness can build up and result in a  powerful legacy affecting individuals and groups alike. When people in this world interact in a

positive and encouraging way with others, their impact can be very profound and long-lasting.  We become entangled with people by simple acts of kindness that we may underestimate at the  time but those affected may keep warm memories for the rest of their lives and in turn affect  others in a positive way. This is particularly true from the perspective of people like my son who  love other people and only see the good in others in spite of or perhaps even because of having  disadvantages in life. It is people like this gentleman who bring true happiness to strangers in  mysterious ways.

The above story is also linked with the next short anecdote as it involves my son Matthew who  is pictured below on his walker when he was still in middle school. In this picture we see him  meeting a pitcher for the New York Mets, Al Leiter (Figure 10.9). Al was a starting pitcher in the  Major Leagues for over 19 seasons, which included playing for the Yankees, Blue Jays and the  Mets. This heart-warming photo is another example of an important connection between two  strangers that vitalizes that human psyche, not just for the child, in this case but also for the  adult. Not surprisingly, Al Leiter, a true gentleman and a class-act on the pitch and off the pitch,  has won nearly every philanthropic award the MLB has to offer. There is something  fundamentally human and indubitably superlative and self-elevating yourself by helping others.  Not only does one strengthen the person on the receiving end of help and encouragement but  this is returned in many mysterious ways. These imponderable explanations for the colossal  subconscious reward and motivations for acts of human kindness hints to an underlying  biophysical quantum nature to this realm of connectedness.

Figure 6.9: Matthew meeting Al Leiter and his wife. The power of connection is rooted in  biophysical phenomena that range in scale from smaller than a human cell to beyond the boundaries of a single person. Few things ennoble the psyche more than lifting another  person’s mood. This picture speaks the proverbial million words about bringing joy to another  person and expecting nothing in return but getting back the greatest gift of all: making another  human happy. Who in this picture gives and who receives joy? Author-supplied photo.

In school, we are exposed to learning not just in the classroom, but outside of it as well.  Character is learned behavior through instruction, experience and examples of role models, but  it depends on the willingness to learn. Learning in the classroom is easier when there is a strong  connection between the student and the teacher. This, like all forms of human connection, is  bidirectionally motivated. Several years ago, my wife and I went to an especially memorable  parent-teacher meeting at our son’s school. We introduced ourselves to one of the teachers,  and when we told her that Matthew was our son, she literally lit up! She recounted a story when  she was having a particularly bad day with her students who were looking disinterested,  nodding off or even sleeping in class. When she looked at Matthew, she explained how he had  a beaming smile and gave her a thumbs-up gesture. It instantly changed her mood, and a  healthy and lasting “team” spirit, which was spontaneously formed at that moment. This is no  more than metaphorical to what is seen at all hierarchical scales of interactions and signaling  that underpins healthy human physiology. Moreover, it represents a deeply interwoven  parameter of human health which synchronizes all organs and tissues of a living system.

On the field, the power of team sports, whether you are a player, a coach, staff member or  indeed just a fan, bonds are innately and subconsciously formed that sometimes last a lifetime.  These attachments are predicated on sacrifice, common purpose, solidarity and mutual respect.  Moreover, sacrificial behaviors are typically instinctive and subliminal, impelled by personal  traits, the joy of it, and the desire to be part of a “team”.

Matthew’s physical disability has never compromised his passion for sports. He had competed  every year from the age of 7 to 22 at the state and national level for the Paralympic Sports Club,  Children’s Lightning Wheels, sponsored by Children’s Specialized Hospital. He always routes,  loudly cheers for and cares mightily for his teammates. Many of these kids were less fortunate,  with greater physical disabilities than his. Matthew’s acute awareness of performing at a  personal best level has been more important than winning. Reaching his maximum potential  was the paramount motivation to lifting his spirits and the spirits of his teammates, family and  friends.

When not competing himself, he lives vicariously through those who are. In high school one of  his greatest joys was being part of the football roster as the team’s statistician. He shared  awesome pleasure when the team won but felt a deep pain that would cause him to cry when  they lost. His distress in fact encouraged him during sophomore year to ask the coach if it would  be allowed for him to give the players a half-time speech. The coach supported his request and  later praised Matthew for his “rousing pep rallies”. At the football awards dinner at the end of  the season that year, all graduating seniors were asked who in their lives inspired them the  most; two of them stated Matthew Fertig. The following year, he was awarded the “12th man  award”, the most inspiring person on the roster. This award was newly conceived with the idea  that it sets a precedent for other deserving students to be honored this way in future years.

Matthew’s connection to his teachers and Lightning Wheels teammates, which was strikingly  similar to that with his high school football team companions, followed the same pattern as at  the highest level of team sports. An example that springs to mind is that of the players of the New York Giants football team. The magic of the connection in each case manifests its  reciprocal and feed-forward self-amplifying nature. In the case of Matthew’s friendly encounter  with the NY Giants, his attraction was potentiated to some extent, but not entirely, by a celebrity  presence. More significant for him has always been an innate desire to translate experiences in  life to forming new “teams” wherever and whenever possible.

Sports provides both literal and metaphorical endogenous shots of adrenaline at many levels of  connectedness, from the engagement as a competing athlete in the sport itself, to being a team  member, to the fellowship and camaraderie amongst fans, and also to the less common but  even more heart-warming examples of friendly, elegant and respectful behavior involving fans of  opposing teams. Having a personal rapport with players on a professional sport’s team is  another “team” in and of itself that gives a sense of “skin in the game” and higher pulses of both  adrenaline (excitement) and dopamine (reward). The biggest reward is when the endogenous  changes in physiology are bidirectionally amplifying, as can be sensed and appreciated from  some of the pictures below.

Finally, it should be underscored that the human connectedness that occurs between someone  like Matthew and any professional athlete, like Shaun O’Hara and Tiki Barber pictured below,  speaks volumes about the athlete’s class and character (Figure 6.10). Their kindness is  motivated by the intrinsic pleasure of lifting the soul of others. It is also worth saying that  Matthew lived the first 3 months of his life, fighting for his life on a mechanical ventilator. The  upregulated autonomic and hormonal branches of his stress response during this early critical  period created a lifelong ‘hair trigger alert’ and reduced tolerance to stress. It has long been my  opinion that Matthew’s visceral sensitivities of others and his affinity for bonding with others is  inherently biological. Social connectedness is interwoven into the physiological cloth that  protects the stress response. The NY Giants went on to win two amazing Super Bowls in 2007  and 2011 when Matthew was 10 and 14 years old, respectively, but his connection to the team  will last his lifetime. It is appropriate to quote in this connection the words of Sir Isaac  Newton: “if I can see far, it’s because I’m standing on the shoulders of Giants.” While Newton  was referring to different “Giants”, the situation he described in this quote parallels the ones  related above.

Moral 4: Nobody is an Island; Social Networks Can Make Us Much Stronger

Figure 6.10. Matthew competing in Lightning Wheels, meeting members of the New York Giants  Tiki Barber behind the scenes as well as Shaun O’Hara and Amani Toomer on the field, graduating from high school, and wearing Shaun O’Hara’s Super Bowl ring. These moments  throughout Matthew’s life illustrate the importance of human connectedness and its powerful  impact on mental and physiological health. Author-supplied photos.

A team comes in many forms. There is an implicit beauty in the reciprocal sharing of  organic self-amplifying circles of joy, sometimes sadness but always meaning and purpose. The  hallmark of a team is the greater strength and resilience of the collective than the sum of its  parts. Success takes many directions.

How can a 40-year-old professional athlete compete with 20 to 30-year-olds at their peak  physical and mental development? As argued in this book, special relativity when applied to  biology indicates a gradual slowing down of bio-energetic metabolism that underpins an  acceleration of the androgynous aging process beyond age 25. This implies a marked  difference in physiological performance strongly favoring the younger athletes. Furthermore,  there may be psychological disadvantages in the older athletes due the awareness on their part  of the physiological deterioration. The more rapidly aging individual will be more acutely aware  of the process than an individual whose experience is that of a still improving athlete. This  invokes Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity, which argues that time does not exist as an  absolute quantity, and when the rate of passage of time is greater than that experienced by  those around you, it feels that the opposite is true. Time and thus aging are captured in  metabolic rate and hence the faster that rate, the slower the aging. The 40-year-old professional  athlete who has not lost a step has an optimal stress response with the interwoven entire gestalt  of extrinsic and intrinsic parameters of human health. These parameters include stress  resilience from psychogenic to molecular levels of redox, microbiota composition and diversity,  goal-oriented behaviors including diet and synchronized circadian endogenous oscillating clocks  that together underpin a metabolism that is the quantum manifestation of energy production.  This 40-year-old athlete is entering his 8th Super Bowl appearance at the time of the writing of  this epilogue. This is not even closely approximated by any other athlete in any type of sport in  American history, surpassing such greats as Michael Jordan in basketball, Wayne Gretzky in  hockey, and Babe Ruth in baseball. Tom Brady has already won 5 of the 7 Super Bowls he  played in, with the only losses, both of them, coming against Eli Manning and the NY Giants  who were overwhelming underdogs each time. This almost superhuman performance of these  great athletes exemplifies the quantum regime of metabolism that corresponds to an aging  process that has not lost its internal synchronization of clocks within clocks but equally  importantly is still firmly in step with the natural circadian rhythm of the Earth cycling around its  own axis.

*This book was written over the course of 10 years, with this passage being written 3 years ago.  Tom Brady is now 43 years old.

Moral 5: Mind Can Win Over Matter and Information is in a Constant Struggle with  Entropy