Speaker 1: 1:26

Okay, everybody, welcome to today's show. I am happy you're here. My name is Dr Jade Tita. I am the host of the Next Level Human podcast and today we're going to be talking about a really very interesting new study that came out and the ramifications of a study like this, if that is, if something like this is true and can be duplicated. And this goes into the idea that has been floating around in the self-development space for some time, and that is the idea that our thoughts and our emotions in this case mainly our thoughts and the intention behind those thoughts words in particular can they influence in some way our body and ourselves.

Speaker 1: 2:16

And a lot of this research really came out of, or the interest in this. We won't call it research, but it really became popularized by Masaru Emoto's work. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his first name correctly, but a lot of people know the Emoto's work. I don't know if I'm pronouncing his first name correctly, but a lot of people know the Emoto water experiments. And this is where, essentially, dr Emoto took words and wrote them on beakers full of water things like negative words and other words that were more positive words and then took that water, froze that water and looked at the crystals that were formed and there's a whole book on his work where he did this and what you would see is that negative words created these ugly sort of crystallizations or frozen elements of the water. So, as you can imagine, when you freeze water you'll have like snowflakes right, these crystalline structures that form in the water almost like a snowflake, and certain positive words would create these beautiful images, these beautiful quote frozen elements of water, these beautiful snowflakes and ugly words or nasty words or negative words would create these other compounds, these frozen elements of water that would create a crystalline structure that was not very attractive, and so Emoto suggested words like love or gratitude when written on containers of water, altered the water's molecular structure in a way and created these beautiful crystalline patterns when the water was frozen.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Now this is something that the lay individual can get very excited about, but at least in my world, where you're looking for evidence and science, this is considered garbage science, pseudoscience, something that has never been replicated and has a lot of negative publicity around, at least in the scientific space publicity around, at least in the scientific space and it's always been something that I've looked at as very dubious, not something I've ever really taken seriously. But I have gotten more interested in this as I've looked into the work of more Gerald Pollack and some of his theoretical considerations. Gerald Pollack is a researcher out of, I believe, the University of Washington, uw, and he has been doing work on water for quite some time, is very well published in this area and has suggested a fourth phase of water, and so let me go through that first because it may have some ramifications in this discussion. And so, as Gerald Pollack's work came out and started to become a little bit more well-known, there are mechanisms by which he has described or theorized about, hypothesized about, that could potentially determine how water could have quote memory, memory for substances or memory for different things that it's interacting with. And so let me go through that research with you really quickly. So this work is the idea that biological water, so-called structured water, or EZ water as Gerald Pollack refers to it, which is known as EZ for exclusion zone water that this water is different than water that you would find in its liquid state, free flowing through a river or sitting in a beaker. It's different than water vapor you might find in the cloud and it's different than solid water that you might find in ice, that it's a fourth phase of water. It's not solid, it's not liquid, it's not gas, it's more this viscous type of water that is kind of a go between between solid ice and liquid water, and it has to do with the way the H2O molecules stack up. So most of us, if we remember our biological chemistry and biochemistry or I guess this would be biological sciences that we took in high school this would be covered.

Speaker 1: 6:47

H2o is considered to look like an oxygen molecule with two hydrogens attached to it, almost like a Mickey Mouse, right? So you see this big oxygen in the middle and these two hydrogens sticking off the sides, and when we look at it in our textbooks it looks kind of like a Mickey Mouse, you know, a face with two ears. And this was H2O. And the idea would be that H2O, this water molecule, just simply interacts with other H2O molecules in like a sheet of water. And what we really know is that it's not necessarily a sheet of water per se, that these water molecules are changing configurations all the time, sharing electrons, protons and sort of floating around in this way.

Speaker 1: 7:35

And what Gerald Pollack's work shows is that when this water gets around, biological substances like cell membranes, cell proteins and things like that in plants and in animals and of course in us humans, it starts to behave differently and begins to stack in a different way. So it no longer looks like H2O. But the idea is that this water is more like H3O2 type of structure and so this structure looks differently and it's hypothesized to look more like a crystalline lattice and a stacking mechanism that the water sort of stacks on top of each other. And what has been showed in Gerald Pollack's work is that it's called exclusion zone water, because when this water begins to stack in this crystalline structure, what it does is it forms a more negative type of polarity, pushing all the positive solutes, things like salts and stuff like that out. And so the water next to the biological layer, next to the protein or next to the membrane membrane, looks differently than what you'd see in bulk water. It is no longer H2O, it looks more like H3O2.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Now, of course this is pretty controversial. If you follow this research, not a lot of scientists agree with this and it certainly has not yet been visualized this way. But what we do know is that biological water is acting differently when it starts to interact with membranes, let's say in the mitochondria in cellular membranes and around proteins, and this is where this research becomes interesting for this discussion. Now let me just briefly tell you and see if you can follow this, and I'll do my best. Now imagine that this water is up against a particular cellular membrane. And because cellular membranes are not smooth surfaces like the beaker of a glass container, if the water was sitting in a stainless steel cup or water container or a glass beaker Cell membranes have all kinds of different proteins and other things sticking off of them, and so at the molecular level they're kind of bumpy, and what happens is water on top of that layer stacks up, and you can almost think about it as this layer of water that begins to stack up in a particular orientation based on the molecular structure of the proteins coming off those membranes, which will look different.

Speaker 1: 10:28

You can kind of almost think of it like a key, and so all of a sudden or maybe a better example might be like a barcode, and so now the water begins to stack up in a particular way and takes on a particular shape corresponding to the cell membrane that it's interacting with, and this is one of the ways that Gerald Pollack and other people are proposing that water can transfer energy and have memory. Electromagnetic fields and energetic signatures can also change the way this water structures or binds together, so that it can subtly change the way these H2O molecules are interacting. Now, again, this is highly controversial stuff. We do not know if this is true, but I'm just giving you this background to perhaps understand what might be going on when you hear about this study that I'm getting ready to tell you about. Okay, so now we've got this controversial study by Emoto putting words on water and then seeing that the crystalline structures, when that water freezes, can be either more beautiful and nice, with positive words, or more ugly and not as ordered, with negative words. And we have some of this work by Gerald Pollack showing that water is behaves differently in biological structures when water is around cells, and we don't exactly know how it's doing what it's doing, but we do know that it's doing something different. We just don't agree on exactly how this is working.

Speaker 1: 12:18

Now I want to bring you to the study that I want you to be aware of, and so this particular study is by Feng et al, in 2023. And the title of the study is Information Fields of Written Texts Protect Cells from Oxidative Damage and Accelerate Repair. And so, right away, you might be thinking to yourself okay, this sounds kind of weird. Right away, you might be thinking to yourself OK, this sounds kind of weird. Basically, are you telling me that written words can influence cells? Well, this sounds a lot like the work that Emoto was doing, and so let me tell you about this particular study.

Speaker 1: 13:01

So what these researchers did is they took cell cultures of human embryonic kidney cells, a particular strain of kidney cells, and this was in a Petri dish, and they subjected these kidney cells to hydrogen peroxide. So hydrogen peroxide is known to be a chemical agent that produces reactive oxygen species and can damage cells. So what they did is they took these kidney cells in a Petri dish and they exposed them to hydrogen peroxide, which is known to be associated with aging, inflammation and disease processes in cells. Then what they did was they introduced written words and texts to these cells. So they had positive words like love and gratitude, as well as single phrases like the word Buddha, and these written words were printed, sealed in an opaque envelope so that it prevented any visual or psychological bias, and then placed beneath the Petri dishes containing the stressed cells. So, step one they stressed out the cells. Step two they put written words in opaque envelopes and then put the Petri dishes on top of those envelopes. Now there was also a control group where the cells were exposed to neutral words or empty envelopes. Now there was also a control group where the cells were exposed to neutral words or empty envelopes, and this was served as the control group. And so these controls really were there to rule out any observed effects that were due to just the presence of the envelope or any unintended environmental variables. It's just the way that you do something, and the other thing about this study is that it was a double-blind design, so neither the researchers handling the cells or those analyzing the results knew which group the cells belonged to, so they didn't know if the cells got a word or if the cells had just a neutral word or a positive word or had no words at all.

Speaker 1: 15:07

Now here were the key findings the cellular structures, the Petri dishes with the cells that were exposed to the envelopes that had positive phrases like love and gratitude written on them, demonstrated a 21% increase in ATP levels, which indicated an enhanced mitochondrial function in those cells. Those cells also had a 29% reduction in reactive oxygen species, which was a marker of cellular stress and cellular damage, and a 19% improvement in the cell growth rate. So they had better recovery. This was the cells that had positive words, like love and gratitude, that they were exposed to in those envelopes. Now the cells that were exposed to the word Buddha had an even better, a slightly better response in ATP levels. Better, a slightly better response in ATP levels, a 22% boost, but basically the same as the 21% boost in the positive cells. And then the control groups those cells that were exposed to neutral words or no words at all had showed no significant changes in ATP, reactive oxygen species or cell growth, confirming that the effects were specific to the positive words and text.

Speaker 1: 19:13

Now, why does this get someone like me more excited? Now, of course, we have to look at results like this and we have to remain skeptical. This could be any number of things. We don't know that this is true. I'm not saying this is necessarily true. What I'm saying is we have this work from Emoto that we never could really duplicate and it was done in a way that no scientific journal would probably accept that for true publication because it wasn't well controlled. And now we have another researcher who has controlled the experiment in a way with live cells, not just water, and seen an effect here and saw a pretty substantial effect. We're talking 21% increase, 29% reduction in damage, 20% increase in cell growth rate just from these cells being exposed to words. This is absolutely bizarre when you think about it, but it does bring back up this idea of the Emoto experiments.

Speaker 1: 20:24

Now, how might this work? Now we're entering into uncharted territory because first of all we say, well, did this work? Does this work? Can really words and intention behind words, or the intention that a word conveys, impact biological systems? And if so, how is this happening? Based on this study I just presented to you, it seems to suggest that this study says yes, they do impact biological systems. So if they do, and if that is actually a thing, how might that be happening? So I'm going to give you a couple of theoretical considerations here that these researchers were considering that might be going on here, and also throw in some of my own conjecture here.

Speaker 1: 21:11

So let's first talk about the idea of information fields and the idea that words could be almost like energetic emitters, and so this is the idea that information fields are involved somehow here, that there is some kind of subtle energy field that is influencing biological systems. Some people who study this work and who theorize on this stuff that these electromagnetic waves carry meaning rather than just energy. So these fields might interact with cellular structures, particularly the mitochondria, which are highly sensitive to environmental signals. This might be one way that this would work, and this is similar to concepts that underpin the study of biofields in alternative medicine. The biofield is an energetic electromagnetic field that essentially is surrounding the body and is thought to play a role in cellular communication and healing. So is it.

Speaker 1: 22:19

Could it be the case that words somehow, when you put specific arrangements of letters together and the meaning that is inherent in that specific arrangement of letters is somehow creating some kind of vibrational imprint, that is, then the cellular water is picking up? Obviously? Emoto did this by putting negative and positive words on beakers of glass and then freezing that water that was in that beaker and seeing changes. Now what we're seeing is the same thing here, where cells are being exposed to, I guess, this intention. How might this work, if it is working at all? This might be one way to think about this working at all. This might be one way to think about this. Now, another way might be something that we might call quantum resonance or vibrational communication.

Speaker 1: 23:12

Quantum biology suggests that biological systems operate on principles of resonance, where vibrating particles communicate by sharing energy and information. One of the ways that we now know this is that our sense of smell has now been proven to not necessarily work in a biological way, where it's a lock and key phenomena, where a molecule looks a particular way and binds to a particular receptor that is complementary in shape and form, but that also what happens is that it's picking up the vibration, the vibrational movement of these molecules, and that is what's changing the scent. And this research was done by taking simple molecules and putting deuterium, a heavier form of hydrogen, into the molecules, which didn't change the shape of the molecules but changed the heaviness of the molecules and would change the way the molecules vibrate and show that those molecules smell different to participants. And this has opened up the door that there are quantum effects that are happening in biological systems and might be what is going on when we smell things. So is it possible that there's some kind of resonant effect when two systems vibrate at the same frequency that amplifies their energy.

Speaker 1: 24:32

So is it possible, for example, that a positive word or intention is vibrating in a particular way that the cellular structures are picking up on in some way and having an effect. For example, a metaphor might be the example of cymatics. Cymatics, if you've ever seen this, is when you take a sound plate, let's say, and you pour sand all over that sound plate and then you send a tone of frequency into the sound plate, like, let's say, 8 hertz or 528 hertz tone of music, and what happens is that sand will form into a shape, a unique shape specific to that sound and that frequency of that sound. Could it be the case that words and the intent behind words are working similar to this sound and cymatic forces and then causing the cells and the cellular structures to behave in particular ways? We definitely know that biological systems like mitochondria are known to maintain some of this quantum coherence. They are picking up and there has been research showing that. I'll cover in future episodes, research showing that mitochondria respond to sound and respond to frequency and can increase energy production as a result of that. They also respond to light. And could it be that they're also responding to intent behind words?

Speaker 1: 26:09

So again, all of this is incredibly speculative, but it's just to sort of throw out ideas about what might be happening and, of course, sort of the final mechanism here which could be an and or situation. Maybe we've got these electrical fields, maybe we've got some of this quantum resonance, but maybe the structured water, this biological water, is partly playing a role in this confirmation. For example, if we take Emoto's work and we put a positive word on a beaker of water and then freeze it and see that it has conformational changes, could it work that the water in our cells is picking up on that energy? In the same way, someone like Dr Emoto suggested Again highly controversial we have to be very careful to even say that this particular study is real and this is a real effect, but based on this study. Obviously I am intrigued enough by this particular study, this new study, to revisit this idea of intent behind words, and so, again, we have to be incredibly speculative. We cannot say this is proven, it's highly controversial, but it is intriguing for sure.

Speaker 1: 27:30

Now, if this is the case, let's just play a game for a minute and say, okay, let's say it is the case and we actually believe, you might believe, that words and intention behind words can have positive effects on biological systems. And, by the way, let's just take a step back here and just think about this for a minute. If I tell you you are so beautiful, you are so courageous, you are so strong, I'm so proud of you. Now, you know, when I say that to you right Some of you, I bet, just listening to this when you hear those words, you feel good. You feel good. There's a resonance that comes over you, right, almost like this ah, thank you, jade, that feels really good. So we know that words can make us feel good.

Speaker 1: 28:19

Now, do we really think that that biology, that feeling that we're having, is simply a result of what's going on in our brain? Or could we potentially see that that could create, almost like a cymatic effect, a resonant effect that goes out through our whole body and makes us feel good and influences the cells? And if we do believe that, what do we think might be contributing to that thing? When I say, oh my gosh, you're so beautiful, when you feel that, what might we think is the thing that is transmitting that energy into ourselves? Well, it could be the biological water. And so, certainly, when I tell you you're so beautiful, you can feel that, especially when someone you love tells you that right. There's even been really cool research that shows that when you tell your dog I love you, that the dog actually has reduced cortisol and different effects. Well, how does that impact our hormonal system if it's not impacting our cells? And so is it really that far of a jump to suggest that the word, seeing a word on the page, is going to have that effect? And then now here's the really big jump that cells can somehow pick up the energy of this when they can't even see the word, that words, just just by being put down on paper, have a particular energy to it, and so I know this is controversial and incredibly interesting, and who knows if this is the case, but this particular study, I think, is a really, really important one to begin looking at. If we're going to really start to be serious about some of these things that we hear about in self-development, we need to have some evidence around them, and this particular study seems to suggest that there are some really interesting things going on here, right? Some really interesting things going on. So this particular study, feng Q et al. Information Fields of Written Text Protect Cells from Oxidated Damage and Accelerate Repair. This was published in the journal Explore in 2023.

Speaker 1: 30:34

Some of the other research if you want to get into this, if you're interested in the Emoto work and you haven't seen that, that was published in 2004. He wrote a book called Healing with Water and he has published in the Journal of Alternative Complementary Medicine back in 2004. And then Gerald Pollack's work is the Fourth Phase of Water. This was published back in 2013. The Fourth Phase of Water this was published back in 2013.

Speaker 1: 30:59

So what do we do with this information? Well, it's just useful information, I think, interesting information, and certainly in the work that I do in my coaching, we look at the idea of self-talk. We look at the idea of how self-talk can impact us and our emotional states. We look at how our emotional states have stories associated with them and how our emotional states can create stories in and of themselves and how these stories are influencing our identity. And now we have certain ways of looking at words very differently and seeing them not just impacting us in this way, but perhaps having direct influence over our emotional state.

Speaker 1: 31:44

So for those of you who are interested in things like neuro-linguistic programming, the value of self-talk and all of these kinds of things, this should give you some pause and food for thought, and so I'm going to end here today. Some pause and food for thought, and so I'm going to end here today. I hope you enjoyed this episode, as always. If you liked what you heard today and you want to continue supporting the Next Level Human podcast, the best way to do that is go over to iTunes or your favorite podcasting application. Give us a review. I love getting reviews from all of you. It really helps spread the news of the show. Appreciate you very much for doing that and I will see you at the next episode.