Dr. Jon Lieff is a neuropsychiatrist with a BA from Yale University and an MD from Harvard Medical School. Known as an innovator in several branches of psychiatry, he pioneered the development of integrated treatment programs for elderly, medically ill, and brain-injured patients, combining medical, psychiatric, and neurological treatment. He was president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry and helped found the major journal in that field—the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. He wrote some of the first books on high technology in psychiatry.
His recent book The Secret Language of Cells: What Biological Conversations Tell Us About the Brain-Body Connection, the Future of Medicine, and Life Itself!, was written for the general reader and explains the surprising science of how very different types of cells cells— bacteria and brain cells, blood cells, and viruses—all speak the same language, which, it turns out, is the way all of biology works. With applications for immunity, chronic pain, weight loss, food allergies, depression, cancer treatment, and virtually every aspect of health and biology, cellular communication is revolutionizing our understanding not just of disease, but of the definition of life itself. His award-winning blog is Searching for the Mind.
Dr. Lieff notes that the central place of cellular signaling in nature dawned on him gradually. For forty years, as a neuro psychiatrist, he witnessed the interactions of medical and mental events—effects of medical conditions on the brain and the actions of mind on the body. After extensive research, it became apparent that no one could say what mind was or where it could be in the brain. This led to the question of where mind, or intelligence, might reside in nature.
Ten years ago, he began an exploration of mind in nature with a website—Searching for the Mind with Jon Lieff, M.D.Presenting detailed blogs on the website each week was the best way to keep up with the most current scientific information and receive immediate feedback from readers. Daily interactions with a large number or readers increased with a Facebook page (Searching for the Mind) and a Twitter account (@jonlieffmd). A large community of people, including many top scientists, joined in attempting to find where intelligence might be in nature. Blog posts included the latest science on the human brain, animal intelligence, plant intelligence, human cells, microbes, and viruses.
For many years, he had been aware of the central place of signals sent by neurons throughout brain circuits. By synthesizing and writing about the most current research from he was led to the startling conclusion that cellular communication is not just in the brain, but is the basis of all current medical science, all biology, and of a new definition of life, itself. Everywhere he looked, all cells are talking to each other. This includes blood cells, immune cells, gut cells, brain cells, plant cells, and all microbes—even viruses, which some scientists don’t classify as alive. It became apparent that signaling between cells is the central way biology works.
This most important fact in biology has been hiding in plain sight—hidden from even scientists because all journal articles are shrouded in impenetrable names of signals, receptors, and cell subtypes. It became apparent that it is not just that cells are the basis of life, rather the way all cells are able to talk with each other using the same types of signals produces every aspect of biology.
The Secret Language of Cells: The Key to Understanding Modern Medical Science—and Life, itself! clearly explains for the general science reader this overarching thesis along with lifestyles of many of the major cells and viruses—microbes, brain cells, gut cells, and immune cells. Understanding these conversations among cells gives a wide range of readers a window into the latest research in biology—those interested in health, microbes, brain, immunity, physiology, plants, evolution, and consciousness.
Readers learn that the latest cancer treatments using microbes and T cells work because they are based on the natural communication among these cells. The ways that microbes are so influential in human life is revealed to be the result of natural conversations between microbes and human cells all using the same language. During infections, immune T cells talk with brain cells, telling them that we should “feel sick” and lie down. Long distance signals direct white blood cells every step of their long journey to an infection. Cancer cells warn their community about immune and microbe attacks. Gut cells talk with microbes to determine who are friends and enemies. In blood vessels, the seemingly innocent capillary lining cells, in fact, instruct each tissue’s stem cells.
These elaborate discussions among cells affect treatments related to metabolism, weight loss, anxiety, gut diseases, and brain diseases. Results of cellular conversations between immune cells and brain cells determine possible treatments for stress, inflammation, depression, anxiety, trauma, brain disease, and microbe invasions.
By understanding how decisions are made among a wide range of cells from the immune system, blood vessels, lining cells of the gut and skin, brain tissues, and microbes, it becomes clear how cellular communication determines health and disease. In fact, understanding cellular communication allows the reader to keep up with the latest, most advanced, modern medical treatments—such as new immune therapies for cancer. Another conclusion is that the immune system and the brain can’t really be separated. Both perceive stress, social isolation, trauma, and infections and talk together constantly about all of these.
Praise:
“The Secret Language of Cells is a must read for anyone seeking to understand modern biology and advanced medical science. It is equally important for those of us who wonder, as I do, how this ubiquitous information transfer in the form of cellular conversations might be related to the emergence of intelligence and consciousness.”
Ray Kurzweil,
Inventor, author, and futurist.
“The Secret Language of Cells presents a new paradigm for understanding health and disease. It also suggests new possibilities for treatment and for promoting healing.”
Andrew Weil, M.D. Author; Director, Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine; Professor University of Arizona College of Medicine
