Why We Have All Become "Sick, Stupid & Angry." | Ep 297 with Dr. Robert Lustig
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
So it's really great to have you today, Robert. Dr. Robert Lustig. You said your name in German and now I keep wanting to say it, but I've heard I've watched you so many times. You've had incredible interviews across many different platforms. And something that stood out because it is one of the things that I am very passionate about. And this is the systemic problem that we have with mental health, a crisis, as you would say, across the world. Maybe there's some people that haven't listened to you before and they don't know what is this crisis that's happening. Can you explain it?
Well, so Daniel, I think it's pretty self-evident that the entire world is experiencing a systemic health crisis, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, also experiencing a mental health crisis, depression, PTSD, addiction. And we're also experiencing a societal health crisis, cyberbullying, othering, war. The question is, are these related or just coincidental? And if they're related, if they're related through what mechanism? That's the question. Because we can spend our money on trying to treat the systemic health crisis. We have done a really lousy job of spending that money and we've gotten nowhere and it's only getting worse. We can spend money on the mental health crisis and it's only gotten worse.
And we can spend money on the societal health crisis and it's only gotten worse. And the bottom line is, it seems like everything's going to hell in a handbasket all around the world, all at the same time. And I would argue that the reason that this has occurred is because we actually haven't even remotely addressed the real problem. And the question is, what ties all of these three things together? And the answer is one area of the brain. One area of the brain. A dysfunction of the fear center of the brain known as the amygdala. Now, once upon a time, Daniel, when you were three years old, you put your hand on a hot stove and you went, well, I'm never doing that again. And you remember that? Everybody remembers that, right?
Well, what that was, was that was a noxious stimulus that went to your amygdala, ended up generating what we call negative reinforcement. You then learned never to do that again. Today, when kids do that, instead of generating an adaptive negative reinforcement response, What you instead see is chronic toxic stress. You see kids melt down. You see kids basically not being able to handle the stimulus. And we see this throughout all walks of life. This notion that we have lost our stress resilience. In the process, we have gotten sick. We have gotten stupid. And we have gotten angry. And when those individual responses become conglomerate over an entire population, over an entire society, you end up with the societal health problems that we have today, which ultimately lead to the planetary health problems as well.
So I would argue that it is this problem in our amygdala that has actually generated these issues. And the question is, well, what then happened to our amygdala? And it turns out there are four breaks on the amygdala, four things that basically tell the amygdala, calm down. And all four of them are breaking at the same time for different reasons.
How are physical illness, mental health, and societal unrest interconnected?
through different mechanisms, but all four are currently dysfunctional. And that's why our amygdala is running hog wild. Basically, it's all amygdala all the time. And I can prove it. The incidence of depression has tripled. The incidence of obsessive compulsive disorder, which is amygdala override, has basically gone up like 10 times in the last 20 years. That is your amygdala on fire. And so the question is, what happened to the amygdala? And I'm writing a book about it right now with my colleague, Dr. Alyssa Epple here at UCSF. Okay. Book will be titled the freeing the hostage brain because that's what we have. We have a hostage brain. We have a hostage situation. where our brain is actually being held hostage by our amygdala because the brakes on the amygdala have basically failed.
Okay, so what are the brakes?
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