Mind Hack � How Corporations Took Over Our Bodies and Brains
The science is in: Processed food is addictive, can make you extremely unhappy and will prematurely
kill you. How did this happen? And how have food manufacturers been able to deceive the
world about these facts? Dr. Robert Lustig has written a new book, �The Hacking of
the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains,�
in which he explains how and why this occurred.
He is perhaps most well-known for his brilliant research into sugar and obesity, and his previous
book, �Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity and Disease,�
was a New York Times Best Seller. Lustig is an emeritus professor of pediatrics in the
division of endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member
of the Institute for Health Policy Studies. Since the last time I interviewed him, he�s
also completed a master�s in public health law.
The Genesis of �Hacking of the American Mind�
The motivation for �The Hacking of the American Mind� began some 30 years ago, while still
a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at Rockefeller University. There, he learned about the interaction
between dopamine and serotonin in the brain. At the time, only basic correlational data
existed, but there appeared to be a very specific interaction going on between these two neurochemicals.
�As I was researching the data for �Fat Chance,� four years ago, it became very
clear that the data had come in on the role of diet and behavioral health,� Lustig says.
�In addition, we also now had neuroimaging studies. I realized everything was falling
into place � that this issue, dopamine and serotonin, was actually at the core of what
had now become our depression and opiate crises. At the same time, I was giving Psychiatry
Grand Rounds at a U.S. medical school in 2014. The woman who ran their outpatient treatment
program took me on a tour of their facility. She was a recovered addict herself. She said
something to me that was so jarring. She said, �When I was shooting up, I was happy. What
my new life has brought me is pleasure.� I thought to myself, �That�s wrong. That�s
exactly turned around.� But I didn�t say anything to her. I went home and talked to
some psychiatry friends. They said, �Oh yeah, a lot of people seem to get addicted
with this concept in mind.� I said, �Well, there�s a book there.� That was the genesis
of this book.� Why Processed Food Diets Fuel Depression
Tryptophan, which is the precursor for serotonin, is one of the rarest amino acids in our diet.
But it�s a mistake to think the answer to depression is as simple as taking tryptophan
to boost serotonin. The reason for this is because most of the tryptophan is converted
to serotonin in your gut, and it does not freely travel into your brain. Lustig explains:
�Tryptophan is the only amino acid that can be converted into serotonin. Tryptophan
is the rarest amino acid in our diet. Eggs have the most. Certain poultry and other avian
species have some [tryptophan]. There�s very little in vegetables. Obviously, carbohydrates
have virtually no tryptophan whatsoever. It�s actually pretty hard to get tryptophan
into your body to start with. Take processed food on top of that, then it�s even harder
because it tends to be tryptophan-depleted. [Moreover], 99.9 percent of the tryptophan
you ingest either gets turned into serotonin in the gut for your gut�s purposes, or it
goes into your platelets to help your platelets help you clot. [So] very little tryptophan
actually gets to the brain. Top that off with the fact that tryptophan
has to share an amino acid transporter with two relatively common amino acids: phenylalanine
and tyrosine, which, by the way, are the precursors for dopamine. You can see that the more processed
food you eat, the more dopamine you will make because you will have the precursors for that.
They will actually crowd out the ability to get tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier
� Yet, serotonin is the nidus of contentment, of happiness. It explains why diet is so problematic
� � Face-to-Face Interaction Has Neurochemical
Effects
Many try to bolster their happiness through certain food choices, but this actually does
not work, and Lustig provides compelling arguments that the foods you crave drive up dopamine
and drive down serotonin. Rather, it�s experiences that make you happy. People can make you happy.
You can make yourself happy. In his book, Lustig outlines a number of different strategies
to become happier.
�Ultimately, the goal is [to increase]your serotonin,� he says. There are four ways
to boost your serotonin, and they�re all free. They�re also things your grandmother
likely told you to do. First and foremost is making human connections.
�Turns out that Facebook does not count as connection. When we�re talking about
interpersonal connection, we�re talking about eye-to-eye,� Lustig says. �The facial
emotions of the person you�re talking with activate a set of neurons in your brain called
�mirror neurons,� which are the drivers of empathy and specifically linked to serotonin.
To be able to generate a feeling of empathy, which ultimately turns into contentment/happiness,
you actually have to connect. You can�t do it over the internet. You can�t have
a connection with �anonymous.� It just doesn�t work.�
On the contrary, social media generate dopamine, associated with pleasure, and hence can drive
addiction. The main problem is that when dopamine goes up, serotonin goes down. So, online communication
is actually a major causative factor of unhappiness.
Lustig also elaborates on how companies � both food manufacturers and electronics companies
� capitalize on the biology of dopamine versus serotonin to get us addicted to their
products. There�s even a book on this topic written by Nir Eyal, called, �Hooked: How
to Build Habit-Forming Products.�
Dopamine Versus Serotonin
It�s important to realize that the dopamine (or reward-generating) pathway is the same
no matter what your source of pleasure is. It can be a substance, such as nicotine, alcohol,
heroin or junk food; or it can be behavior, such as internet surfing, shopping or pornography.
The problem, in a nutshell, is that dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter, and in
excess is neurotoxic.
When dopamine is released, and the neuron on the other side accepts the signal, it can
damage that neuron. Over time, excitatory neurotransmitters can cause cell death. To
protect itself from damage, the postsynaptic neuron employs a self-protective mechanism
� it downregulates its receptors.
By having fewer receptors, the dopamine cannot do as much damage. So, each time you get a
�hit� or rush of dopamine, the number of receptors decrease. As a result, you need
increasingly larger doses or �hits� to get the same rush. Eventually, you end up
with tolerance, a state where even a large dose produces no effect. Once the neurons
start to actually die off, you�re a full-blown addict.
�The point that you need to know is that it takes three weeks for the receptors to
repopulate. The cravings can go on for upwards of a year when you�re addicted. This is
a long-term process that sometimes requires medical intervention and medical management
by physicians who understand addiction medicine,� Lustig says.
Serotonin, on the other hand, is not an excitatory neurotransmitter. When it acts on the serotonin-1a
receptor (the �contentment� receptor), no damage occurs. Hence, happiness does not
lead to addictive behavior. Keep in mind that dopamine downregulates serotonin, so it�s
basically impossible to achieve happiness (related to serotonin) through pleasure-seeking
behavior (related to dopamine).
One of the cheapest pleasures that stimulates dopamine is sugar. Many reach for sweet junk
food when they feel down, thinking it�ll help them feel better, but neurochemical science
reveals this simply cannot happen. Add the stress hormone cortisol to the mix, which
downregulates the serotonin-1a receptor, and you have a recipe for both addiction and depression.
�That�s what we�re seeing throughout all of civilized society, not just in America,
but around the world,� Lustig says.
Other Serotonin Boosters
There are three other ways, besides connecting, that boost serotonin and happiness. The remaining
three of the four Cs are:
1. Contribute: Meaning the act of contributing to something greater than yourself; making
a contribution to society. �You can get happiness and contentment from your job, but
there are certain criteria that have to be met,� Lustig says. �Most people, unfortunately,
have a boss who is not contributing to their happiness. The workplace is not usually the
best place to achieve meaningful contentment.�
2. Cope: Lack of sleep, insufficient exercise and multitasking are all causes of unhappiness.
Sleep is extremely important for healthy serotonin production. Here, avoiding exposure to electronic
screens is important, as blue light inhibits melatonin production, thereby making sleep
more elusive. Electronics will also disrupt your sleep and deteriorate your health by
exposing you to unnecessary microwaves, discussed in this recent article on depression.
3. Cook: If you cook, you�re likely going to increase your tryptophan, reduce your refined
sugar intake and increase your omega-3 fats (anti-inflammatory) and fiber. Overall, this
will result in improved gut health, which has tremendous impact on your mood and mental
health.
�Numerous investigators � have shown that your gastrointestinal flora tell your brain
what they want through signals that go through the bloodstream, and potentially even neural
ones as well. If you do not feed your bacteria, you cannot get happy. Eating real food you
prepare yourself is super important,� Lustig says.
Eating Real Food Helps Optimize Tryptophan and Other Vital Brain Nutrients
As mentioned, a big part of the happiness equation is to increase serotonin by optimizing
tryptophan. However, the dilemma is that most of the serotonin produced in the gut is used
there locally. It does not enter your brain. Lustig explains:
�There are many diversions for tryptophan away from the brain. It can be metabolized
in the intestine itself. It can be metabolized in the platelets. It can be turned into kynurenine,
which is a secondary metabolite in the liver. It may not be transported across the blood-brain
barrier because of phenylalanine and tyrosine taking up the aromatic amino acid transporter.
In addition, of course, your serotonin neurons must be functional. There are things that
will kill off serotonin neurons, including party drugs. For instance, MDMA, or Ecstasy,
is a famous dopamine and serotonin killer � Once you�ve lost those serotonin neurons,
it�s pretty hard to get any sort of happiness signal.�
So, how do you boost systemic tryptophan? One of the keys is to eat real food, and to
make sure you include high-tryptophan foods, the highest of which is egg whites. You also
need omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, which is a component of every cell in your
body. More than 90 percent of the omega-3 fat found in brain tissue is DHA.
�Omega-3s are probably the single most beneficial thing you can put in your body. They are anti-inflammatory.
They are anti-Alzheimer�s. They increase membrane fluidity. Therefore, they increase
neuronal distensibility, which means it�s less likely that any given neuron will die,�
Lustig says. �The problem, of course, is that when we
took the fat out of the food, we took ALL the fat out of the food. It�s been a real
chore to get the medical cognoscenti to turn around on this. I do want to do a shoutout
to the American Heart Association, because they have now debunked their long-standing
cholesterol-fat hypothesis. They now recognize that saturated fat was
not the demon they made it out to be, and that there are seven classes of fats, and
that you actually have to consume omega-3s. You have to consume monounsaturated fats.
In fact, you do have to consume some saturated fat because it�s a major component of membranes.�
The Corporate Takeover
So, how have food companies contributed to the problems of food and drug addiction? According
to Lustig, �If you look at the Supreme Court decisions that took place between the mid-�70s
and mid-�80s, they took away individual rights and loaded up corporate rights in a
very distinct fashion.� In his book, he describes four specific Supreme Court decisions,
one of which basically deregulated corporate speech.
Corporations can say anything they want, whenever they want, regardless of whether it�s actually
true. Our current epidemics of opioid and food addiction are outgrowths of corporate
dishonesty.
�We are now seeing the advent of the post-truth society because of how the Supreme Court chipped
away at our own individual rights,� Lustig says. �By doing so, corporations have affected
our ability to experience pleasure and happiness. They�ve actually inserted propaganda into
our limbic system, our reward generating system, so that we constantly seek reward at the expense
of our own happiness. This is why we currently live in the world
we live in. The late political philosopher from Princeton, Sheldon Wolin, wrote a poignant
book called �Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism,�
[in which]he envisioned that corporations and government � would become one and the
same. If you look at what�s going on in the White
House today, you can see that Wolin�s nightmare scenario has been realized. It�s fascism
in the sense that we don�t seem to have a voice of our own. It�s not fascism in
the sense that it�s corporations that�s told us what to do. It�s that we�ve basically
abdicated our own responsibility for our own health and safety.�
The EatREAL Trust Mark
Speaking of living in a post-truth society, you might not realize there�s no regulation
against restaurants blatantly lying about what they�re serving you. Larry Olmsted,
in his book �Real Food/Fake Food: Why You Don�t Know What You�re Eating and What
You Can Do About It,� addresses this. There are no consequences, no regulatory action,
for lying to customers. The deception will only enrich them � until or unless they�re
publicly outed and perhaps boycotted.
One way to protect your interests when eating out is to make sure the restaurant is affiliated
with Responsible Epicurean and Agricultural Leadership, better known as EatREAL, a nonprofit
Lustig helped create. It teaches restaurants what they �should be doing,� and provides
a trust mark to the public � a green fork.
The High Cost of Added Sugar
Processed fructose, mostly in the form of corn syrup, has become a major contributor
to the $3 trillion health care budget in the United States, and there�s clear data linking
sugar consumption to de novo lipogenesis � a disease process associated with fat accumulation
in the liver, causing insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, metabolic syndrome and associated
diseases. That includes Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, cardiovascular disease, cancer
and dementia.
�We have the mechanism by which this occurs. In fact, our paper in Gastroenterology1 demonstrates
that if you take sugar out of the diet of children with metabolic syndrome and substitute
starch � calorie for calorie exchange, glucose for fructose exchange with no change in calories
� � in 10 days, you can reverse metabolic syndrome.
You can reverse the insulin resistance. You can reverse the liver fat. You can reverse
the burden on the pancreas. Basically, all of the metabolic perturbations go away. This
is the smoking gun,� Lustig says. �In addition, we have a paper in BMJ Open2 which
models what could happen in terms of health care expenditures and disease rates if we
reduced our sugar consumption by 20 percent, which is what taxes would do.
Or if we reduce sugar consumption by 50 percent (which is what the United States Department
of Agriculture suggested we do), for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease alone � the United States,
over the next 20 years, could save $103 billion, just on that disease alone. Ultimately, this
is where the money goes. This is why health care will be defunct. This is why Medicare
will be broke by the year 2026 � We have to deal with health. Health is going
down the tubes. There�s no amount of health care that can fix what�s wrong with our
diet, unless we fix the diet first � The bottom line is we are in trouble. But you
can�t fix a problem until you recognize what the problem is. This book, �The Hacking
of the American Mind,� demonstrates how the science, how the biology, ultimately has
influenced not just our health, but in fact, our policy.�
More Information
In the past, people had a much better understanding of happiness and pleasure. Lustig�s book
describes how these terms have been purposely conflated and confused by businesses and governments
because it helped sales. To turn the trends of addiction around, you have to understand
the difference between the two.
�So, what�s the difference between pleasure and happiness? There are seven differences:
Pleasure is visceral; happiness is ethereal. Pleasure is short-term; happiness is long-term.
Pleasure is usually achieved alone; happiness is usually achieved in social groupings. Pleasure
is taking; happiness is giving. Pleasure can be achieved with substances; happiness cannot
be achieved with substances. The extremes of pleasure all lead to addiction,
whereas there is no such thing as being addicted to happiness. Finally, pleasure is dopamine
and happiness is serotonin. Understanding the difference between the two
is something, for some reason, that the American public just never got. We have to make them
get it in order to turn this problem around. Academics don�t get it. Businesses don�t
get it. The federal government certainly doesn�t get it. We have to make them get it. That�s
why this book is so crucial.� I couldn�t agree more, and �The Hacking
of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains�
will certainly help you understand the distinction between dopamine, serotonin and the variables
that help optimize these neurotransmitters. Most importantly, the way he explains it all
has the power motivate healthy behavior.
�The bottom line is it�s about the science,� Lustig says. �There will be detractors who
will say this is garbage. But the bottom line is there are 600 references to the primary
literature to demonstrate that this is not gobbledygook. The science actually predicts
the phenomena that we see and the society we�ve become.�
For more infomation >> Jalapeño Cheddar Beer Bread | Food Network - Duration: 0:52. 
For more infomation >> September 22, 2017, VTA Board of Directors Workshop Meeting - Duration: 3:55:41. 
For more infomation >> Reacting to Bollywood ( INDIAN ) Actors age | أعمار الممثلين الهنود - Duration: 5:34. 
For more infomation >> Utility worker gets trapped by fallen tree limb - Duration: 1:20. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét