Page 69 - Summer 2019 Journal

All Thumbs Book Reviews
The Hacking of the American Mind:
The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains
By Dr. Robert H. Lustig
Avery Publishing Group
Dr. Robert Lustig is a pediatric endocri- nologist and obesity research scientist at the University of California-San Francisco. He has become alarmed and saddened by the increase in children developing chronic diseases formerly only seen in adults, such as type 2 diabetes. He offers some of the reasons why our nation’s children, as well as adults, are all increasingly sick and discusses what we can do about it.
Two caveats: Lustig adheres to “medical doctor opinions” about the value of pharma- cology for depression; he also places ultimate faith in the Mediterranean diet. Otherwise, his conclusions about how to stem the tide of chroni- cally broken bodies and dysfunctional brains are right on. In his conclusion, he offers the key to happiness, and I personally believe he is correct.
Lustig opens with a John Butler Yeats quote: “Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure, not this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.” Distinguishing between pleasure (reward) and happiness (con- tentment), he explains that our twin modern epidemics of addiction and depression stem from too much pleasure and too little happiness.
Reward is short-lived (about an hour). How long does a person remember the pleasure of going for that second piece of chocolate cake? Contentment, on the other hand, is long-lasting. It is that sense of achievement you feel watch- ing your children succeed in life, or witnessing the garden you planted in the spring grow and provide delicious produce in the summer and fall. Reward is also a fight-or-flight type of excitement with blood pressure and heart rate going up—such as watching your horse run in a big race. Contentment slows down your heart rate, lowers your blood pressure and leaves you feeling calmer. (Reflect on a day at the beach
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with your family.) Finally, reward is driven by dopamine and contentment by serotonin. Both are neurotransmitters but work very differently.
The book’s first part covers the neurosci- ence of addiction in considerable depth, with a focus on dopamine. Lustig states, “You might call dopamine the dark underbelly of our consumer culture. It’s the driver of desire, the purveyor of pleasure and the neurotransmitter of novelty, the lever that business pushes to keep our economy going, but at a clear, perceptible, and increasing cost. . . .We are perpetually in need of the next shiny object.” Lustig addresses the problems and core similarities of modern addictions that include opioids, alcohol, tobacco, Netflix binging, sugar, texting, Internet surfing and social media.
Serotonin is the neurotransmitter associated with contentment. While Lustig believes that SSRI drugs can help very depressed people, he acknowledges that they don’t work for everyone, nor do they work forever. One of serotonin’s pre- cursors is tryptophan. The amount of tryptophan in your diet influences how well you sleep and your level of contentment. People who eat eggs and fish have the highest blood levels of tryp- tophan. Lustig points out that many processed foods do not contain eggs or fish, both of which are tricky to process and allergens to some. For people who rely mainly on processed foods, their diet is likely quite low in tryptophan.
Lustig also admits that animal feed de- termines the quality of the amino acids in the animal’s meat. Corn-fed beef is lower in tryp- tophan than grass-fed beef, and the same goes for corn-fed chicken. This is yet another reason that most Americans are short on tryptophan in their diet. Please pass the grass-fed—or better yet pastured—beef!
Lustig reviews how our intake of refined sugar has increased through the centuries. People in the Middle Ages used sugar in tiny amounts. Up through the mid-1900s, sugar was a condiment, eaten in modest amounts. In the last fifty years, however, sugar has become a
Wise Traditions
Our twin modern epidemics of addiction and depression stem from too much pleasure
and too little happiness.
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