systems have become chronically activated in response to
our diets and lifestyles. This has been recognized in the past
several years as playing a pivotal role in driving or initiating
many of the chronic, degenerative diseases plaguing
modern society. Widespread inflammation can eventually
damage your DNA, promote insulin resistance (the
underlying mechanism that drives type 2 diabetes), and
cause weight gain. This may be why systemic inflammation
correlates significantly with a larger waistline.^4 In the
coming chapters, we will definitively link these same factors
to brain disease, brain fog, and depression as well.
Overfeeding
We haven’t always been able to summon our food with a
few swipes on a smartphone. By solving our species’ food
scarcity problem during the Agricultural Revolution, we’ve
created a new one: overfeeding. For the first time in history,
there are more overweight than underweight humans
walking the Earth.^5 With our bodies constantly in a “fed”
state, an ancient balance has been lost, one that has set us up
for low brain energy, accelerated aging, and decay. Part of
this has to do with the fact that many foods today are
specifically designed to push our brains to an artificial “bliss
point” beyond which self-control becomes futile (we’ll
explore this in chapter 3).
Nutrient Deficiency
In Vanilla Sky (one of my favorite films), writer/director
Cameron Crowe wrote, “Every passing minute is a chance