From New Insights into the System of Basal-Regulation

From Neural Therapy, Reflex Zones and Somatotopies: A Key to the Diagnostic and Therapeutic Understanding of Man’s Ills, a seminar guide compiled by the American Academy of Biological Dentistry, June 1989

“The concept of a cell is, precisely discerned, only a morphologic abstraction. Biologically seen, it cannot be considered apart from the life-milieu of the cell.”

With these words, Pischinger (d. 1982) has recognized the weakness of the then-valid paradigm of the cellular teaching of Virchow. Virchow (1958), in his work on cellular pathology, related the concept of illness exclusively to disturbances in the makeup of the individual cell. This was based on the assumption that each of the ca. 50 billion cells in the human organism presents an “elementary organism” which, being enveloped and demarcated by the cell-membrane, exists at first for itself, yet integrated in an organism of divided labor, contributing its share to the function of the total (Frese, 1985).

This linear cause – effect reasoning, introduced in the European Natural Sciences by Galilei (d. 1642), had as its consequence that organisms are seen as complicated cellular functional units, analogous to technical instruments which, in the case of defects, can be repaired correspondingly. In the end, all would depend only on discovering the illness-causing molecule in a cell. For the time being, one believes to have observed that already in the point-mutations of individual amino-acids. This linearity in medical thinking has extensive consequences in the school-medicine therapy scheme: a medicine must link with a suitable cellular receptor, whereby a reaction is released only when both the reactants fit together like key and lock.

To make possible a holding-fast to such simple cause – effect relationships, one is thereby forced to isolate and treat the acute occurrence from the network of biologic connections as a syndrome. It is evident that, especially in chronic illnesses with tumors, the difference between effect and effectiveness can hardly be discerned (Fuelgraff, 1985). This causal – analytical linearity thusly influences the methods-teaching for the clinical testing and drug therapy. The individual phenomenon of being ill is subsumed to a type of illness. This becomes objectified in a model and thus open to causal – analytic instrumentation. Reality is replaced by models which must be reduced more increasingly, with increasing complexity of the reality. “Medical experience is not at all formed, because the action is oriented toward the model, not on reality” (Fuelgraff, 1985). The model has neither parameters for individual biologic determination nor for the living quality at its disposal.

Since, additionally, various illnesses may be hidden behind identical symptomatic syndromes, the randomized double-blind executed clinical endeavor can only be a method for obtaining some knowledge. It is undoubtedly wrong to stylize it as the only method because casuistry and experience reports are precisely capable of what is not possible for the “objective,” controlled, clinical effort: to place into the foreground of the medical effort that which is individual about the illness. The Virchowsche cellular paradigm has become so successful in modern medicine because, especially for acute illnesses and those caused by microorganisms, single and objectifiable causes are findable, which can be directly eliminated or repaired. But in the present situation of increased chronic diseases and tumors, this hardly happens anymore.

Before the triumphal effect of the Virchowsche cellular teaching, the individual aspect of an illness was seen in the changing body humors. Assumptions about them go back to archaic times. Alkmaion, Hippocrates, Galen and their students differentiated four body humors: blood, mucous, yellow and black gall. Their correct blending (Eucrasia) was said to be the foundation for health; a disturbed blending (Dyscrasia), that for illness. One also saw the humors as the carriers of the constitution of the body. The teaching on these humors was organized by a contemporary of Virchow, the Viennese pathologist v. Rokitansky into a Doctrine of Humors, which, however, as humoral pathology could not bring forth the same handy proofs as the Virchowsche pathology produced, was superceded in time. Only Pischinger and his collaborators have, since 1945, in Austria, opened up the humoral teaching as a system of basal regulation to a rational medicinal-naturopathic methodology. They have placed [Virchow’s] isolated cell out of its abstraction, into the Trias Capillary Basal Substance Cell as the smallest functional common denominator of life in a vertebral organism.

The about simultaneously arising Cybernetics (Weiner, 1963) and the development of a theory of [the] “thermodynamic of energetically open systems” have shown that biologic systems show no linearity but they are highly interwoven (networking) and are underlying a biologic flow-equilibrium (v. Bertalanffy, 1952). That is to say, biologic systems are energetically open and therefore in a position of exchanging energy and matter with their surroundings. The thusly created conditions of order are, however, not stable. They deviate far from a thermal equilibrium, which generally does not allow a return to the point of beginning. In spite of this, as, e.g., in hereditary matters, stabilities may be reached which otherwise only accrue to minerals. Open systems, in contrast to classic, closed, so-called Newtonian systems, show that with supply of suitable energy (non-chaotic energy, e.g., nutrients), it can spread instantly throughout the whole system; by autocatalytic ways, new structures appear which can also unfold further into higher orders.

The consideration of cybernetic connections enforces a departing from the ground of mono-causal thinking. Generally, in biologic systems, there is no causal connection between regulating supplies on the one hand and outflows on the other hand…(e.g., underestimated side-effects of medicines). “But whoever tries to apply a one-dimensional causal chain for networking systems can no longer claim a scientific character for his works” (Thomas, 1984).

The difficulties in discovering linear cause-effect relationships in organisms are founded in the fact that we are dealing with highly interwoven, energetically open systems. The most suitable energy form for imparting and maintaining structure and order in a biologic system is informations supply and processing. The great significance of information as a non-chaotic energy form lies in that it is not bound to a particular energy-carrier (e.g., sound waves of the air, informations-transfer to the auditory ossicles in the middle ear, further to the sensory cells of the cochlea, from there to the 8th brain nerve, and finally transfer to the corresponding neuron fields in the brain). Therefore, information is the most suitable energy-carrier in living systems, in order to release both near-reaching and far-reaching intercellular interactions (Fischer, 1985). This corresponds to the goal of an organism to maintain itself as a unit. Naturally, it is needful to establish the particular conditions causal-analytically, but with the sign of increasing chronic illnesses, one must search for the conditions of a superior regulating principle which serves foundationally the striving for survival of the organism.

This principle exists as the basal substance and its regulatory mechanisms (Pischinger, 1954, 1974). Correspondingly, the basal substance penetrates the extracellular spaces of the entire organism; it reaches every cell and reacts always unitively. Where in epithelial mehrkernigen symplasms or in the brain mass the extracellular space is reduced to a minimal crevice, the basal substance forms the intercellular substance. Biologically, the basal substance forms a network made of high-polymeric sugar-protein complexes in which the proteoglycans preponderate…., followed by structure-glycoproteins (collagen, elastin, fibronectin, laminin, etc.). Proteoglycans and structure glycoproteins form one molecular sieve through which the entire metabolism from the capillary to the cell, and reversed, must pass (“transit passage”). Molecules from a certain size on and/or charge, are subject to an exclusion effect. The size of the pores of the filter is determined by the concentration of proteoglycans in the respective tissue compartment, their molecular weights, as well as by electrolyte and resultant pH value, according to case. Herein, of decisive functional significance is the negative charge of the proteoglycans, whereby they are made capable of water compounds and exchange of ions: mono-valent for bivalent cation[s].

Thereby, they are guarantors for isoiony, isoomy and isotony in the basal substance (Hauss, et al., 1968). The electrostatic basic tonus thereby established reacts to every change in the basal substance with potential mutations. The informations encoded in this way can again communicate themselves as potential mutations of the glycocalyx of the cell membrane. There, if they are strong enough (informations selection!), they can bring about a cell reaction via depolarization of the cell membrane (e.g., muscle and nerve cells), or – as with all other cell types – they can transfer the information coded into the basal substance into cytoplasmic enzymes via activation of membrane-established second messengers (cyclic adenosinmonophosphate, inosittriphosphate, etc.). These reach the cell core, and at last they can strike the genetic material of the cell core (nucleus) at the suitable place. Thereafter follows the transcription of corresponding DNA sections (genes) into the diverse RNA types. After transfer into the cytoplasma, the diverse RNA types start at the tubes of the endoplasmic reticulum the translation of the informations into cellular products (summary by Heine & Schaeg, 1979).

Through the net-like macromoleculary superstructure of the proteoglycans, the mechanical coherence of the tissue is also essentially determined (Balsz & Gibbs, 1970; Buddecke, 1971) Thereby, e.g., also the terminal axons of vegetative nerve fibers come under a precisely determined mechanical and electrical tension, and they can react by releasing neurotransmitted substances and neuropeptides. Proteoglycans form a shock-absorbing system, which works like a gliding substance (joint grease) which, in the case of strong and repeated mechanical stress, changes into a viscoelastic system. This is workable in a high measure and is thereby using up energy. For the coding of informations into the basal substance belong, thus, also those rheologic ones coupled to biochemic changes (Heine & Schaeg, 1979).

Because the basal substance is connected with the central nervous system via the peripheral vegetative nerve fibers, which end blind into the basal substance, and connected with the endocrine glands via the capillaries, and both systems are inter-switched with each other in the brain stem, superior regulations-centers can be influenced via the basal substance. Because capillaries, vegatative nerve fibers and connective tissue cells (which regulate the basal substance) can influence each other mutually via the wandering connective tissue cells (macrophages, leukocytes, mast cells) which carry informations about released cell products (prostaglandins, interleukins, interferons, proteases, protease inhibitors, etc.), the result is a vastly complex, net-like humoral system, the scientific precursor of which must be searched in the classical humors teaching. The advantage of such interwoven systems lies in a considerable raising of the adaptability and performance capacity, and the possibility of, again and again, entirely newly arising characteristics, which would not be reachable by the mere summarizing of the individual characteristics of the components.

In spite of high specialization of subsystems (e.g., immune system) and thusly conditioned susceptibilities, the evolutionary usefulness of highly integrated biologic systems lies in their redundance. That means “that the system can compensate for the falling out of single components or subsystems by other components or subsystems taking over wholly or in part, lastingly or also for a time of repair, the tasks of the defective components” (Thomas, 1984).

The basal substance is phylogenetically older than the nervous and hormonal systems. Correspondingly, it is regulated compensatory in its composition and decomposition by a very fundamental cell system: the fibroblasts-macrophages system. While fibroblasts are capable of responding to situations within seconds, with a quantitatively and qualitatively adjusted synthesis of proteoglycans and structural glycoproteins, macrophages can normally again decompose basal substance through phagocytosis. Because the fibroblast cannot discriminate between “good and bad,” when it undergoes a chronic alteration, there develops an increasingly unphysiologic structure in the basal substance, which can contribute substantially to the development of chronic illnesses up to tumors by its influence on all cellular elements (Heine, 1985).

The sugar polymers of the basal substance are, therefore, suited for conducting and storing informations in the basal substance on the basis of their high capacity for water compounds and ions-exchanges. In contrast to the bipolymer DNA which conserves genetic code, in the basal substance, the aim is not the conservation of informations with the possibility of information transmission through transcription and translation but the quick and orderly informations-conduction and -distribution for the actual regulating of the homeostasis.

The structural combinations of water and sugar bipolymers are, in my opinion, the oldest informations and defense systems of one- and multicellular living beings which breathe oxygen (in protozoans, bacteria and viruses, the sugar polymers connect themselves with the cell membrane as its outer covering). These polymers are additionally suited to help regulate the latent inflammatory readiness of the connective tissue as redox system by taking up and releasing electrons, thus maintaining the level of homeostasis (Levine & Kidd, 1985). On the basis of these redox characteristics, every situation which changes the tonus of the basal substance can be coded as information and far-reachingly, in reciprocal action, spread and assimilated in the organism. Simultaneously, excessive extracellular electrons and protons in the form of oxygen and hydroxyl radicals, which occur in all enzymatically regulated conversions, can be caught up by water and sugar polymers. The warmth resulting from this is again needed for the stimulation of biologic processes. Therefore, the regulatory capacity of the basal substance has highest significance within the illness-happening. Thus, it is provable that in all acute and chronic illnesses, as well as tumors, there occur regulatory disturbances and ultra-structural changes in the basal substance (Pischinger, 1983; Perger, 1983; Heine, 1985). The sugar polymers of the basal substance experience in the course of evolution a binding to a protein spine (Rueckgrat) from which stems the designation proteoglycans (only hyaluron acid forms an exception…) – or they become bound to the outside of the cell membranes by membrane proteins and lipids (glycoproteins and -lipids of the sugar surface film – glycocalyx – of the cell). Likewise, all structure proteins (collagen, elastin, fibronectin, etc.) undergo a glycolization.

In most enzymatic reactions in the basal substance and the cells, sugar is participating in the form of nucleotides as components of the coenzymes. Nucleotides are composed of a base, a monosaccharide (nearly always a ribose) and phosphate acid. Just because coenzymes are mediators between diverse enzymes, they have as connective links special significance for the metabolism, which becomes possible only through them. The term “nucleotide” points out that they have first been found as building blocks for nucleic acid (DNA, RNA). Also, certain second messengers, such as cAMP, cGMP and inositphosphate, which expedite the extra-intercelluar informations transfer, contain a mononucleotide. It seems that in this continuous “sugar principle of livingness,” an ancient precellular evolutionary happening is reflected. The water-sugar polymers have evolutionarily always remained modern.

With the arising of metabolization of oxygen as life-foundation, immediately the Janus-headedness of this evolutionary step became revealed. On the one hand, for higher-organized sentient beings, the extraction of energy from oxygen via the formation of ATP, along the mitochondrial breath chain, is needed for survival; on the other hand, the thereby occurring inflammation-promoting oxygen radicals must be made harmless. The energy released by the antioxidative enzymatic processes can be caught up by the water-sugar polymers of the basal substance, which not only effects a cooling of the organismic “reactor” but simultaneously makes the necessary energy ready for the maintenance of homeostasis. It is similar with highly energetic electrons, which essentially stem from the oxydative breakup of carbon-hydrogen compounds as they, e.g., occur in the glucose-splitting (Levine & Kidd, 1985). In the course of evolution, important intra and extracellular antioxidants systems have thereby developed, e.g., the intracellular peroxidedismutase, catalase, glutathionperoxidase, and in the extracellular space, the ascorbic acid, vitamin A and E, etc. Fundamentally, the electrons- and protons-shiftings which occur in the enzymatic oxygen metabolization lead to manifold formations of radicals. Their energy becomes absorbed into the physiologic redox potential of the organism via the basal substance. If the enzymatic steps responsible for the electrons and protons transfers are disturbed, which may happen at first quite focally, e.g., through insufficient blood supply, then there is an accumulation of radicals.

The unphysiologic changes in the redox potential of the basal substance resulting therefrom, when long continued, lead to the danger of the development of chronic inflammatory diseases up to formation of tumors (Pischinger, 1974; Perger, 1983).

The system water-sugar polymer undergoes an energetic stabilization in all organisms through combination with a protein spine which itself is bound with hyaluron acid via connective proteins….These proteoglycan bipolymers receive heightened electronic negativity through sulphatizing and aminizing, as well as terminal addition of acetylneuramin acid (sial acid) (summary by Heine & Schaeg, 1979).

It is important to understand the functional relationship between water and proteoglycan molecules through their molecular structure…: proteoglycans have a brush-like structure; the ca. 300 nm long protein spine is the “brush handle,” the polysaccharide chains – because of mutual electro-negative repulsion – represent the ca. 60 nm to 100 nm stretched long “bristles.” The molecular weight of the proteoglycans lies between about 106 to 108 dalton (Hascall & Hascall, 1983). This molecular form is obviously especially suited for combination with water, whereby a single proteoglycan molecule can take up a very large space (domain) compared to its molecular weight. The “domain” essentially determines the “molecular sieve character,” as well as the viscoelastic, shock-absorbing and energy-consuming attitude of the basal substance (summaries by Balasz, 1970; Heine & Schraeg, 1979; Hay, 1983).

The molecular form of the tissue water has been thoroughly examined by Trincher (1979). The special suitability of net-like water molecules as informations conductors and storers between the cells is, according to Trincher (1978), based on their molecular structure, which consists of ca. 50% liquid crystals at body temperature. To maintain water in this condition, it should have the lower energy need at 37.5°. Misinformations stored in the liquid crystals could be extinguished again with correspondingly higher temperature, thus changing to a more homogeneous liquid (Trincher, 1978). Also, the biophoton emission of cells, listed by Popp (1976), could contribute to far-reaching informative reciprocal effects via these liquid crystalline intercellular “bridges.”

Characteristic for the crystalline liquid is the formation of parallel and two-dimensionally arranged molecular swarms, which are limited to small areas and are not stable as to time. They are in constant construction and destruction, and display to one another static, disordered situations. The size of these swarms lies about in the area of light waves. Even weak outer energies suffice for bringing about a condition of higher order (Hollemann-Richter, 1964).

That the tissue water exists in a special condition is indicated by the histologic dry-freeze. In the drying of tissues, ice crystal formation can be avoided only when the water after immediate cooling of the tissue exists in liquid air (-150° C), not in ice-crystalline form. The subsequent drying process must be executed under high underpressure below the temperature of the eutectic point of the tissue water.

The tissue water changes directly into the steam condition and can be pumped away. If the drying process is interrupted too early, then with heightened temperature and gradual breaking of the vacuum in the area of the eutectic point of the tissue water ([ca.] between -58° C and -52° C), there occurs a short-lasting breakdown of the vacuum with development of ice crystals and the destruction of the cell structure (Heine, 1974). The deep-lying eutectic point of the tissue water is not alone depending on its composition because media of similar composition, such as are used, e.g., for cell cultures, begin already at about -8° to freeze up (own observations). The remarkable eutectic behavior of the tissue water seems, therefore, to be dependent on the arrangement of liquid crystalline water between the sugar polymers of the proteoglycan brushes.

The foundation of all intercellular near- and far-reaching interactions in a multicellular organism lies obviously in the water-sugar polymers of the basal substance which, on grounds of its chemical composition, is capable of informations conduction and storage. The system is energetically open and capable of caring for all accumulating energies from radical reactions occurring in all metabolic processes. The energy fluctuations arising thereby can, however, from a certain size on, through change in the condition of the liquid crystalline water, suddenly spread throughout the basal substance and become used by the cells as informations.

For that, even small energy units suffice, as has been shown, e.g., in the Prick phenomenon according to Pischinger (1974) and the seconds phenomenon of the neural therapy according to Huneke (1983). The energy-shiftings released thereby need no biochemical proof, but they may become measurable biophysically, among other ways, as deviations in the redox potential of the connective tissue. It is therefore logical that, especially in chronic illnesses and tumors which obviously always go hand in hand with changes of the proteoglycan pattern in the basal substance (Heine, 1985), a changed redox potential occurs in the basal substance which is frequently unable to be regulated therapeutically (Pischinger, 1974; Perger, 1983).

The life-sustaining principle of the basal regulation is particularly impressive when compared to the tumors. Quite different from the regulation in the normal basal substance, the tumor cells strangulate membrane-surrounded vesica (“tumormatrixvesica”) which may more or less maintain the entire spectrum of cell components.

Released into the extracellular space, the heightened measure of cell-organic and membrane-metabolistic products (prostaglandins, leukotrienes, peroxides, hydroylions, released nucleotides, lipds, proteolytic enzymes, etc.) lead to the destruction of the regular basal substance and increased tumor-caused regulation via “tumormatrixvesica” (Heine, 1985). That again seems to be promotive for tumor growth. In the tumor basal substance, the immune component cells simultaneously lose their capacity for recognition and orientation. Since all chemo-therapeutica and zytostatica must pass through the basal substance in order to reach their destination, the regulation of the normal basal substance must of necessity be attacked thereby. The frustrating results of School-Medicine, which is oriented toward the individual tumor cell in its tumor therapy, proves this point. Therefore, it is to be considered whether the disturbance of the healthy tissue – e.g., through activation of the fibroblasts (“paramunal stimulation,” u.a. Phytotherapeutica) adjuvant to the established therapies would not make more sense. This can be summarized in the short formula:

FIGHT THE TUMOR FROM THE HEALTHY TISSUE

The essential elements of a precellular evolution appear to be reflected in the sugar biopolymers: through simple oxidative steps which begin from carbohydrates, aldehydes and carboxylic acids can come about. The latter are easily changeable into polysaccharides, proteins and fats through simple chemical reactions. According to quantum chemical examinations by Goldanski (1986), as well as Hoyle and Wickramasinghe (1984), the development of polysaccharides is possible under the extreme conditions of the interstellar (cosmic) space. In this, it is not needful to reach the necessary energy-niveau normally required for such reactions under normal temperatures; it can be gone around quantum chemically, that is, the energy mountain needed for this can be tunnelled.

Tunnel processes, therefore, permit chemical reactions when there are extraordinarily low temperatures (Goldanski, 1986). As the named researchers have shown, the formaldehyde which is in this way interstellarly provable has special significance because it can join together under these extreme conditions into chains of formaldehyde polymers – as has been proven experimentally. At the present time, there is a discussion as to “whether interstellar formaldehyde molecules cannot actually transform into stable polysaccharides such as cellulose and starch” (Goldanski, 1986). Therefore, it touches one peculiarly that the nature-philosophic thoughts of Giordano Bruno, Schelling and Goethe about the cosmic omnipresence of the life principle are, herewith, obtaining a natural-scientific foundation.

Originally published in German