The secret of wellness is identifying the illness
Robert H. Lustig
He is an American pediatric endocrinologist.
He is Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he specialised in neuroendocrinology and childhood obesity.
He is also director of UCSF's WATCH program (Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health), and president and co-founder of the non-profit Institute for Responsible Nutrition.
In the United States, rates of suicide, depression and death from heroin have grown up severely. Deaths due to diabetes or heart diseases are also increasing seriously but the money is going to chronic metabolic diseases and not to hospitals.
Mental health, metabolic health and the social security system are going down to the tubes. Those problems are related. Is one of them the cause of the others or is there another factor?
Data show that there is a link between happiness and longevity. However, we have to distinguish pleasure from happiness as they are completely different:
- Pleasure is characterised by: short lived, visceral, taking, experienced alone, achievable with substances, extremes lead to addictions, dopamine.
- Happiness is related to: long lived, giving, experienced with others, not achievable with substances, cannot be addicted to happiness, serotonin.
The Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is the brain’s brake to addiction, depression, anxiety, inattention, hate. The PFC thickness is related to obesity and executive functions and mainly due to too high dopamine and cortisol levels and low level of serotonin.
In the United States, Data show that in the same states, we have obesity, less active people, unhappy people, high diabetes, heart and Alzheimer’s rates, high opioid and high soda rates per capita.
Two main factors increase the level of dopamine: sugar and addiction to social network as Facebook. Data show that the behaviors due to high level of dopamine increased with the arrival of processed food and IPhone.
